Michael Meade tells a story to illustrate the idea that sometimes we must go where we fear to go. Fear is an old word that derives from the same roots that give us “fare,” as in “thoroughfare.” Although it often causes people to run away from troubling situations, at a deeper level, fear means “to go through it.” When we fail to recognize how fear works in the world, we become ruled by it. The point is not to become paralyzed with foreboding or be caught in the panic that can grip the collective and cause people to run blindly in the wrong direction. The point is to willingly go where most fear to go and follow where the fear might lead.   Fear used to be called “the awakener,” for healthy fear intends to awaken us to our inner nature and the meaning and purpose embedded in our souls. When faced with danger or disintegration, fear would have us respond from the depths of our soul, where the core pattern of life tries to grow and guide our way. In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, become more genuine, and live more fully.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about how stories can awaken us and give deep insight into our lives by taking Michael Meade’s new in-depth course “Finding Stories to Live With”. Purchase and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/store.    You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Michael Meade uses an ancient tale about a lost message from the god of creation to consider the contemporary dilemma in which many people become blind to the truth. The old Sanskrit word avidya can mean “ignorance,” but also “delusion.” Avidya is a fundamental blindness about reality, not simply a lack of information that can be resolved with some new facts, but a veiling of the truth that can befall, not simply individuals, but entire groups of people.   The veil of avidya causes a kind of trance state in which people become increasingly distanced from their own deeper self as well as the underlying realities of life. The loss of shared truths in the outer world must be balanced by a greater sense of inner truth being uncovered in the hearts and souls of individuals. This kind of awakening involves a conscious connection to a deeper sense of self, which then becomes the unifying factor in each life. When the center cannot hold in the outside world and everything becomes divided, we need to tap the deep resources of our own self and soul, which can connect us to the endless energies of creation.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

Unlike religious narratives or scientific theories, folk myths don't require that we believe in them. They simply prefer that we continue to learn from them. Sometimes, the ancient wisdom needed for surviving and transforming our lives comes in the form of animals. This episode of Living Myth centers upon an old teaching tale about how a wise fish, a half-wise fish and one who is simply unwise deal with the nets intended to entrap them. Amidst a consideration of all the current crises that can entrap and incapacitate us, a bird appears with three pieces of wisdom about avoiding being trapped by the past as well as being caught in present fears and dangers.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Increasing tensions throughout the world pit the effects of modern culture against the instinctive practice of becoming a genuine individual. Yet, the heart of the human drama concerns whether we are becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life. Either we are following spirit and growing more soul or we can find ourselves shrinking from life.   Downward movement personalizes and upward movement eternalizes. Thus, the genuine way is made by answering both the call to spirit and the pull of soul. Spirit continually calls us to awaken to a greater sense of self, while soul would have us connect more deeply to the world.   When in touch with the soul’s mythic thread we can find the arts and practices, the aims and meanings that allow our souls to grow deeper, our imagination to expand and our spirits to awaken.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

As the world rattles around us and the soul trembles, balancing symbols and archetypal energies stir deep within us. If we can hold the tension of the immediate limitations, we can connect to the soul’s power of redemption and life’s natural energies of renewal.   Archetypes, like instincts, are part of our inner inheritance. They hold all the potentials of life and can initiate creative responses to the challenges and dilemmas we face. As the outside world becomes more divided, the sense of creation coming from within repeats and renews the origins of life as when the sky and earth were separated and the world began.   The archetype of creativity connects us with the deepest roots of humanity and the ancient roots of renewal. The emergence of imagination and inspiration from within is a revelation of our undaunted soul and a little redemption as each act of creativity brings something new and meaningful into the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Under the rule of the ego or little-self, we live on the fringes of our natural potential and our genuine purpose in life. A core pattern exists in each soul intended to shape the unique project of that life from within. Whenever we experience a life transition or personal crisis, the esoteric pattern and latent genius within us tries to awaken.   At each turning point in life, we must face our deepest fears in order to grow. The path of discovery will inevitably raise the exact fears that hold the heart captive. If we don't respond to fear, that's when we get stuck and paralyzed by fear. Fear is a message to the instincts and the intuitions of a person to move towards a greater awareness.   In contrast to the sense of a heroic journey that leads to treasure in the outside world, the road of awakening involves a pilgrimage to the genuine center of the deep self. What is so often sought in the outer world waits to be discovered in the soul’s inner realm. As things fall apart all around us, we have to find the center of the deep self within us.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Currently, the world is beset by a cascade of crises that seem impossible to solve. Yet, the situation can also be seen as what the ancient Greeks called a kairos period, a betwixt and between time in which the course of history changes and all of reality seems to be altered. Things become both impossible and more possible at the same time as life transforms on many levels.   A kairos period often begins with crises that break time open and break down our usual patterns of life. Although radically disorienting, such moments can be transformative, even revelatory as hidden potentials of life become more visible. In that sense, kairos can be seen as “awakened time,” moments in which we can awaken to a greater sense of the world and our place in it.   Moments of awakening become “lived time” in which genuine transformation can occur at all levels of life. We have entered such an extended moment of radical change and alteration, one that is life-defining as well as life-changing. When the whole world turns upside down, it is the soul at the bottom of everything that is trying to become known again.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode takes up the issue of healing from the ancient idea of the Sacred Fifth, or Secret Fifth, that represents the hidden center of the world, the original source of wholeness and renewal. Following the Navajo myth of the Fifth World, Meade describes how a small reed can become the connective link to the axis of the world that then leads to the hidden center that remains the living source of life.  The ancient myth becomes a way of recovering from and shifting the burden of the otherwise overwhelming dilemmas of the modern world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this New Year’s podcast, Michael Meade begins an exploration of the myths of creation and tales of re-creation that allow time to renew and the world to begin again.  Any serious consideration of creation must also include the energies of chaos that continually dissolve and disintegrate  what creation establishes in the world.  An ancient story from India describes the “two hands of creation” through which the world recreates itself from emptiness  as well as from abundance, from sorrow as well as joy and from despair as well as wonder.    Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 590 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode approaches the darkest time of the year through the creative tension between time and eternity and between darkness and the light. Prior to the hardening of time that is so characteristic of the modern world, the eternal was understood to be part of the present moment, as well as being part of the distant past.   The mystery of renewal is woven into the fabric of being and into the cycles of nature, so that moments like winter solstice represent the core process of creation ongoing. In the far reaches of night, the sun stops for a pregnant moment in which timelessness renews time and brings the light back from the darkness. When seen symbolically, it also represents our innate ability to move from the darkness of unconsciousness to being more aware, or as people say, enlightened.   On one hand, we are time-bound creatures, on the other, we are secretly tied to eternal things. Because we live in such dark times in terms of all the conflicts in the world and the threats to the living systems of nature, it becomes more important that we relearn the secret connections between time and timelessness and between the darkness and the light.   The essence of solstice involves stopping, even if only for a moment, so that a touch of the eternal can restore our sense of the holiness and sacredness of life at the very time when the darkness is at its deepest. The instinct for warmth and care for love, and also for generosity in the dark of the year, arises naturally from the souls longing to feel the holiness and the interconnectedness of all of life.   In making beauty at the darkest time on Earth, we stand in relation to the natural beauty and the natural wonder of this world. We stand in connection to the radiance of the cosmos as anything from a single candle to a glowing shrine or a great bonfire can become a symbol of our longing to help bring the light of spirit and the touch of healing and holiness to life on Earth.   On a personal level, solstice creates an opportunity for each of us to let go of what holds us back in life before starting anew as the sun does each year. When the light of the soul grows within us, it contributes the light of imagination and the spirit of inspiration needed to bring greater understanding to the world.   In facing the darkness together, we can rekindle the divine spark of life in each of our souls and can help each other renew the sense of human community being essentially connected to the light of creation, to the breath of inspiration and to the ongoing process of creation and renewal on Earth.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Currently, the common understanding of “streaming” means “listening to music or watching video in real time as part of a continuous stream of data.” An older idea describes a cosmic stream of essential knowledge constantly pouring through the world. This much needed knowledge about life on earth flows freely, but at such a fast rate of speed that most people cannot catch it or even see it.   On this episode, Michael Meade suggests that when it comes to finding ways to respond to the climate crisis and all the humanitarian issues in the world, we may have to find ways to slow down and tap into the ancient stream of wisdom.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

This episode of Living Myth begins with scientific studies of the ways that ants can be capable of incredible feats during times of crisis. A single ant will quickly drown in the turbulent floodwaters of a hurricane. Yet, a group of ants can instinctively create water repelling rafts that allow them to float for weeks without drowning. Flotillas of ants are an example of “swarm intelligence,” a collective creative capacity that allows ants and other species to solve complex problems.   In the strange way that facts and myth can meaningfully coincide, the Hopi First Nations people of the American Southwest have compelling stories of how the Anu Naki or Ant Friends were the saviors and original guides of the first people. When the entire world was threatened by fire and great floods, it was the Ant People who showed the first humans how to find refuge and sustenance and survive life threatening changes.   The Ant Friends also showed people how to create Kivas as underground spaces for community rituals and prayer. The old word Kiva has two parts with ki meaning ant and va meaning a dwelling place. A Kiva could be a place of refuge and retreat from the pressures of the daily world. It was also a place of connecting with Earth energies that can bring healing and centering to the entire community.   Indigenous peoples from all around the world typically learned about survival and adaptation in times of radical change by reading the texts of nature. Ancient myths and the resilience of other species can both serve as guides to how we survive the cataclysms occurring in the world at this time. For, both can be sources of essential insights into what was once understood as the Earth wisdom embedded in the living texts of nature.   Since we find ourselves, once again, facing both intense heat and great floods, we need to learn more about truly resilient systems that involve creativity as well as survival. That includes “swarm intelligence” as well as the kinds of Earth wisdom that can help us survive the uncharted waters, the hurricane seasons, and the rogue waves that currently threaten the ecosystems of nature as well as the social systems of human culture.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9 and his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the ancient idea that nothing exists until it passes through imagination. Imagination is not simply a subjective inner capacity; rather, it is a genuine force of life. In this old way of seeing, the increase of conflicts and intensification of hate in the world can be seen as a loss of soul and a lack of genuine imagination.   At a time when modern cultures can be seen to be unraveling and the sense of the shared suffering of humanity so quickly turns into hatred for whoever can be deemed as the “other,” genuine imagination is not just increasingly important, but can be seen as the redeeming factor for both the individual human soul and for human culture as a totality.   Although viewing life in literal terms has become a habit for many, it ultimately gives us a false sense of security and keeps us blind to the knowledge we most need when the world around us keeps changing. In the ancient world, myth could mean emergent truth and mythic imagination was understood to be the primary way in which the human mind and the human heart could connect or reconnect to the universal truths that underlie all of reality.   Lacking a renewed sense of genuine imagination, the modern world will continue to divide and fall apart. For what is missing in most cases is not simply a lack of the resources needed to change things, but a tragic lack of the imagination required to awaken to a greater, more inclusive visions of reality. For, it is the intermediating function of imagination that makes it possible to unite otherwise opposing states, such as the objective and the subjective, religion and science or any pair of antithetical ideologies.   Imagination has always been the unifying force in the human psyche, the inherent function that precedes thought, but also follows the body's inner ways of knowing and being. Imagination is the key that opens us to all that is immeasurable, creative, and healing in life. For that reason, imagination has been called the deepest power of the human psyche.   The power of imagination, which is part of the natural inheritance of each soul, has surprising and indelible capacities for creativity and renewal. By the virtue of imagination, we see with penetrating insights and creative vision, not the delusions of fantasy, but the surprise of revelation. The point is to allow the immediate powers of myth and imagination to give us a poetic grasp of our own lives and the events of the world. Without such a mythic sense, the world becomes increasingly divided and we can become overwhelmed by conflicts both inner and outer. As the collective sense of unity collapses, the uniqueness within each person's soul becomes the essential source of the unifying imagination needed to sustain and renew life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with an ancient Mayan myth about the first human ancestors being shaped from corn. Far from being random creatures, humans were created to bring missing ingredients to the world. The missing ingredients included: a conscious awareness of the wonder of creation, a sense of gratitude and thankfulness, and a potential for imagination and genuine vision.   Central to the role of humans was the capacity to be thankful for the gift of life. Thus, people all over the earth have created ceremonies and practices of gratitude and thanksgiving. The idea of giving thanks and the word thankfulness comes from the old root word grazia, which gives us gratitude as well as grace. In that sense, what we seek in giving thanks are moments of gratitude that can bring a sense of grace back into the world. And this can happen in small ways that do not require large gatherings, an abundance of food, or any pretension that everyone might agree on life's great issues.   More than ever, we need occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be. We need moments of wholeness to rekindle our spirits and to ease our souls. We need to feel that life, despite all the existing divisions and heated conflicts, remains a holy place, a place where healing remains possible.   When the world keeps turning upside down, it can be time to look and feel deeper inside in order to find the people and aspects of life that we are most grateful for. Sometimes that's all we need to do in order to reconnect to and contribute to the holiness of life. In doing that, we can ease the burden of our own hearts; we can also connect to the original sense of humanity and enable more grace to enter the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth looks at both the need to transform and our resistance to change through the lens of the metamorphosis of butterflies. The fact that the Greek word psyche means butterfly implies how we are secretly connected to the essential dynamic of transformation in life. As if compelled by the primordial poetics of transformation, scientists named the cells that carry the potential for a true transformation of the caterpillar “imaginal cells.”   The capacity of the imaginal cells to develop into a butterfly and transform life completely is related to the inner capacity of the human soul to also transform repeatedly in the course of life. In the same sense that the imaginal cells hold all the information and energy for the butterfly to be, there is core imagination and deeper self trying to awaken in the soul of each person.   At the same time, something within us resists changing, even when the time for transforming our lives has come. In the mysterious way of the world, the metamorphosis of the butterfly also offers ways to understand why we resist the exact changes we most need in order to transform ourselves and help change the world. In simple biological terms, an exchange of one kind of cell for a different kind of cell changes a crawling caterpillar to a winged butterfly. In terms of understanding the essential dynamic of change in the world and at the core of the human soul, a great mystery is revealed that can be called the wisdom of the butterfly.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode Michael Meade turns to Greek myths about the Furies in order to imagine ways that deeper understanding and healing might be found amidst the tragic events engulfing Gaza and Israel and the “unbearable losses and blood-dimmed blindness that currently plague humanity as a whole.”   The Furies appear as primordial spirits of vengeance and retribution that can rise from the underworld when people violate the rules of nature, when innocent blood is wrongfully spilled on the earth and when age-old feuds are provoked.   Once stirred to a frenzy, the Furies enter the daily world in many shapes and forms, causing people to act out vengeance in ways that are deeply personal, but are also the expression of unhealed wounds and grievances that go back to ancestral roots. In Homer's Iliad the Furies frequently cloud people's judgment and cause them to act irrationally. However, the prolonged presence of the Furies can shift fierce passions to violent rages and beyond that to untold madness; for the Furies were known to punish people by driving them mad.   The Furies are stirred by acts of violence that violate nature and shed innocent blood and there is a kind of primal, albeit blind justice in that. Yet, there is also a greater sense of the sacredness of life and a level of justice that exists deep in the soul of humanity, that can reveal ways to greater understanding and make true healing and forgiveness possible.    When the Furies threatened to torment all inhabitants of the Earth and make the land toxic and unlivable, the goddess Athena persuaded them to relent and break the cycles of blood vengeance. The wisdom of Athena includes a deep knowledge of the difference between protecting life and being caught in tragic battles that can only continue the violence and vengeance that drives people apart, that can drive them mad and destroys the Earth in the process.   As goddess of wisdom and protector of civil society, Athena gave the Furies a place of respect in her own temple. Instead of simply being the hard hand of retribution, they could also contribute to finding mercy for the suffering of people. Vengeance and retribution could not simply be removed from the world; however, a balancing capacity for mercy and forgiveness was revealed to be a necessary part of finding justice and preserving life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Living in a Time of Overwhelm” that on Thursday, November 16. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with recent scientific research showing how having purpose can lower levels of stress and contribute to longevity for older people. Michael Meade suggests that in troubled times finding a genuine purpose is also necessary for young people who can easily become discouraged and despairing about life. The ancient Greek term telos refers to the kind of purpose that gives us, not simply a sense of aim, but the potential for fulfillment. Connecting to that kind of inherent purpose gives us a deeper sense of self and also a capacity to respond spontaneously to critical turning points in life.   A true life purpose is not an optional choice or an outline of goals we might accomplish, but rather something inherent and expectant seeded within each heart and soul. In that sense, being purposeful does not simply mean being goal oriented, but being connected to the inner meaning and core pattern of our self and soul.   Finding a genuine purpose gives us a sense of being centered and dwelling deeply within our true self, while also being more able to respond spontaneously to a rapidly changing world. Whether the awakening to genuine purpose happens as part of a longevity process for older people or appears as the beginning of a meaningful life for young people, facing great uncertainty, finding and living our soul's purpose is the way that each of us, in our own way, can contribute to the making and shaping of the next version of the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Living in a Time of Overwhelm” that on Thursday, November 16. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with the idea that we are living in the dark times in which the storms, conflicts and tragedies that darken the earth place us in a crisis of spirit and soul. Either we find a greater sense of our own life spirit and soul purpose or we become overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety, helplessness and despair. As the light hidden in darkness, the soul includes the power of imagination as well as surprising capacities for creativity and renewal.   Michael Meade describes how the dark time of the year, as well as the dark periods in life, were the precise times when ancient cultures turned to myths, stories and rituals to find ways to restore the imagination of people and renew the spirit of life. Meade offers two ancient myths that show how genuine visions, creative ideas and healing come from consciously entering the darkness in order to bring lost knowledge and wisdom back into the light of consciousness.   The lives of the artists and creators, the healers and the peace makers involve conscious descents into darkness to find what is hidden and what has been lost. That's the mythic message, the ancient learning and the hidden light waiting to be found in the darkest of times.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This replay of a timely a relevant episode considers the difficulties of finding peace in a troubled world. The increasing amount of tension and conflict in the outside world generates a corresponding intensification of conflicts within each soul. Because the individual soul is not separate from the conditions of the world, simply turning away from outside conflicts does not necessarily lead to states of inner peace.   The word peace comes from two deep roots. On one hand, peace can mean “to settle, to find stillness;” on the other hand, it can mean “to reconcile, to make agreements.” Each root meaning involves a deeper understanding of life and each can lead to finding a greater sense of inner peace.   Being at peace can feel like sitting by a still pond, untroubled by anxiety or the stress of daily life. Yet, being at peace with oneself can also mean finding a vital stream of creative expression that connects the deeper self within us with a genuine calling and way of serving the world. Either way, if we can't find inner agreements that help resolve our own conflicts, we won't be able to help solve the great conflicts that now divide the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart Within the Heart” that begins on Thursday, October 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the growing procession of unprecedented, heart rending and earth-shattering events that currently tear at the core of human culture and also ravage the face of the earth.   The sense of a split screen world of growing tragedies involves one screen showing a map of all the life-threatening hot spots where brutal, deadly warfare is already raging and many other conflicts are heating up. A parallel screen shows the growing number of hot spots where temperatures keep spiking at record levels and the ravages of climate crisis endanger earth’s essential ecosystems.   It may be hard to imagine that we have reached a point where widespread warfare involving many nations might occur again, while we also arrive at the place where radical heat waves have already become a deadly danger for vulnerable people in many parts the world; but that is where we are.   It is our mutual fate and increasingly our shared nightmare to be living at a time when human vengeance and the technologies of war are making more places on earth dangerous to the point of becoming unlivable. At the same time, the lack of creative solutions and the heartfelt commitment needed to stop global warming endangers increasing numbers of people who inhabit places that are also becoming unlivable.   We are living through a great turning of the tides of time and churning of the chaos that surfaces between the end of one era and the beginning of another. We are caught in a cosmic moment of time turning over and life repeatedly turning upside down. We are in the tension of a great transition in history in which both destruction and creation are involved and where one can turn into the other, in true apocalyptic fashion. Chaos, turmoil and loss are all essential characteristics of apocalypse, but so are revelation, discovery of lost things and the potential of renewal.   A poet once wrote that “in the dark times, the eye begins to see,” meaning that it is when we face the darkness around and admit the nightmare that has fallen upon us, we begin to see with the inner eyes of the soul of humanity and with the kind of vision and care that can come from our own hearts and we become capable of seeing ways forward. In this old way of seeing, the heart breaking purpose of tragedies is to awaken us to the importance of each individual life as well as to the life enhancing necessity of our innate connections to the enduring pulse of nature and to the living spirit of the Earth itself.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart Within the Heart” that begins on Thursday, October 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with the ancient axiom inscribed at the Oracle of Delphi: Know Thyself. In Greek mythology Delphi was known as the “navel of the world,” the center and womb from which life as well as inspiration comes. Like many ancient practices, seeking guidance from the oracle also involved a ritual process of being made anew by connecting to the center and the origins of life.   Ancient people went to the oracular center when they were stuck in life or felt overwhelmed by conflicts, loss or tragedy. In many ways, we find ourselves in a collective condition of conflicts and overwhelm that also requires guidance, wisdom and oracular truth.   Michael Meade explores connections between the ancient symbolic center and the deep self-center in each person, which can also be oracular. The deep self and soul within each person can speak in the form of big dreams, sudden realizations and moments of awakening that can reveal guiding visions and inner truths.   Seen that way, to “know thyself” can mean to know that there is medicine within you, that each soul is connected to the womb of the earth, to archetypal sources of wisdom and to the capacity to renew by touching the origins of life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart Within the Heart” that begins on Thursday, October 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with the idea that our original agreement with life involves the inner dream of our soul and the unique pattern that brought us into being in the first place. At birth the soul enters a series of secondary agreements that involve accepting the world as we find it and learning to negotiate between our soul and the “facts of life,” between our deepest desires and the reality of one’s circumstances.   Our true guide is the deepest image in our soul, the divine spark and core imagination that is also the renewing force of our being. Each soul lives on the verge of remembering the forgotten agreement and original dream that it carries within. In that sense, the real struggle in life has always been to become that which we already are at our heart’s core.   At each critical turning point in life the first agreement of our soul tries to become more conscious to us. Either we are growing more soul and becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life or we are shrinking from life and secretly feeding blind instincts and the hungry ghosts.   Although we are never far from our original agreement and divine connection, it often seems the farthest thing from us. Recalling the soul’s original agreement provides us a return to the underlying unity of life and a sense of genuine purpose in the world. The most genuinely human moments are moments in which the soul awakens to its original dream of life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth tells the story of Gustave Fechner, a scientist and professor of physics who went blind while doing experiments involving human sight. After years of living in utter darkness, his eyesight returned, bringing with it a renewed vision of the world. After decades of looking at the world through the lens of physics and the hard sciences, Fechner had a spiritual awakening that brought a deeply personal connection to the living pulse of nature.   Having dwelt for years in darkness, the doctor had developed a kind of vision that revealed the living soul of nature. His book on The Soul Life of Plants showed how plants and trees are part of an ensouled world. It was an international best seller for over seventy-five years.  Dr. Fechner became a renowned teacher of natural philosophy and “psychophysics,” a branch of psychology which refuted the artificial separation between mind and body, between subject and object.   In the great lost and found of the cosmos, important knowledge keeps being forgotten. It also keeps trying to become conscious again, but tends to do so after we have experienced a period of darkness. When the world turns dark again, as it has now, it's important to know that the inner light of the soul is not a reflection from the outer world, but an inner light itself, a visionary flame that burns with emotional heat and vitality, but also with a capacity for illumination.   Everyone has access to a key that can open the door to a meaningful life, yet each must enter their own darkness in order to discover it. In learning how to follow the light hidden within our own darkness, we help break the spell of single-eyed vision that has damaged the living realm of nature and help in the recovery of all that has been lost in terms of genuine vision, ancient wisdom and the underlying unity of life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of the Great Soul Trial, a strange event in 1967 in which the existence of the human soul was the subject of a superior court trial in Phoenix, Arizona. The loss of soul that now plagues modern culture is then traced back to the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869 CE.  Before that Council the main conception of human nature derived from the ancient view of the cosmos being made of spirit, soul and matter. After that event the prevailing notion became a dualism of spirit and matter that lacked the presence of soul as the connecting tissue at all levels of life.   This sense of division and loss of soul affects human thinking to this day in the form of the mind-body split and contributes to the sense that human culture and nature are essentially opposed. The loss of soul is part of what allows people to exploit nature in ways that are degrading, and also part of the collective ideas that say that human culture has to dominate nature.   Despite what has often been concluded in legal courts, in church councils and in the halls of science, the soul is another kind of body, a subtle body that partakes of both spirituality and physicality and fills the subtle space between spirit and matter. It may seem strange now, but the soul used to be known as the light found in darkness. In troubled times, it's important to know that the soul is undaunted by the conflicts and divisions that seem about to overwhelm human society.   When life becomes more polarized than it need be, and things become more divided than they should be, it is the way of the soul that is missing and desperately needed in order to heal the divisions and make things whole again. The good news is that soul awakens as things seem to fall apart and soul would have us each find our unique part in life’s ongoing drama. Having awakened souls and making more soul in the world is essential for changing life on earth.   Through soul we can connect to the most ancient knowledge as well as the most immediate inspirations of life. For, like gold hidden in the earth, the human soul has deep resources and a great capacity to find meaningful paths that rationality cannot discover. Finding soul and making soul involves a certain kind of courage, a kind of trust in the living world, and a sense that when everything else becomes more divided, soul knows where and how we are each intended to reconnect to the spirit of life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode addresses the increase of anxiety at both the collective and individual levels of life. Each day we face extreme weather changes and extreme politics, but also the exaggerated feelings that develop inside people as well. As irrational influences and undue pressures become common it becomes difficult to avoid intense feelings, edgy thoughts and the alienating presence of anxiety.   “In simpler times, people used to say that they were under stress. But the amount of stress in the world at this time is so great that it makes sense to say that we feel caught in anxiety or about to be overwhelmed with our anxiety. In times like this, it's important to know that the stress in the world manifests as collective anxiety that adds to our sense of personal angst. Another important idea is that anxiety is a measure of the distance between the ego or the little self, and the greater or deeper self within us.   When we find ourselves feeling increasingly anxious, we can give in to the overwhelm or turn inwards to find a connection to the deeper self, which has essential resources that are part of the natural inheritance of humanity. Surprising as it may seem, when the ego self is overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, the greater self within us is closer to awakening. When all seems lost, the only way out is a greater revelation of what and who we are already at the core of ourselves.   People drown in the seas of change because they cling to abstract notions, or conventional patterns that lack true buoyancy. The weight of life’s troubles seeks a solution at a deeper level. When crisis becomes the common way of being and troubling emotions can arise at any moment, it becomes important to have a genuine art or a practice that helps keep the fears and the doubts and the existential dread at bay. For, the practices that help us grow an inner life continue whether we find ourselves in the heights or in the depths.   A practice is different from a skill because we can learn skills without meaningfully changing our character. Through a practice we become more genuinely established in ourselves, we gain an emotional seating, a place to dwell and return to again and again. A genuine practice means loving something enough to be with it again and again in all the moods of our soul and in all the waves of emotion that can flow through us body and soul. The pilgrimage of life has always been aimed at the center and deep self and soul within each person. A genuine practice will deepen and expand our inner life; it can ease our soul, but also affect the world around us.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 570 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth takes up the issue of deep inner fears that keep us from finding our way in life. Rapid changes in nature and culture cause an increasing loss of context in life and that gives rise to greater levels of fear, both collectively and individually. Typically, our inner patterns of fear derive from early life feelings of abandonment and from early experiences that suggest the world is too overwhelming for someone as insignificant as us.   Later in life we continue to harbor and live out our infantile fears. Whenever genuine change is required of us or being truly honest is necessary for us, our inner fears become like demons or hungry lions we must face. At opportune moments we can suddenly be overwhelmed by fears of feeling inadequate or fears of being ultimately abandoned and left alone. We become self-rejecting and self-abandoning unless we somehow face those fears and trust that something meaningful and valuable is trying to live through us.   For, it isn't simply that fear is in the way, it's more that fear is part of the way. What we fear most will not simply go away, because it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, in order to become more genuine, in order to live more fully as ourselves. Ultimately, our greatest fears are connected to our deepest sense of self and the hidden purpose of fear involves accessing the deep resources of our own soul.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode brings a focus to the need for having a calling in life and the idea that as the world seems to fall apart there can be an acceleration of calling. The human heart carries an indelible expectation of being called to a greater sense of meaning and a revelation of our true aims in life. In the old sense of a rite of passage, the deeper point is not simply to grow up and take more responsibility in society, but rather to awaken to the story trying to unfold from within oneself. The point is to open up, to break out and to feel the feathers of the heart in full flight.   No one knows when an opening to spirit might come and change the trajectory of their life. Something as light as a feather, as bright as an idea or as fleeting as a dream comes into our life and essential aspects of our souls become revealed to us, at the same time that the mysteries of nature and the realms of spirit speak directly to us.   Without a calling we can feel lost throughout our lives. Without a genuine purpose, we can turn bitter, drifting without genuine passion and withering without the blessing of the spirit of life. Yet, the spirit of life within us does not age as we grow older. The inner genius continues to be on the verge of awakening and our calling keeps calling no matter what age we are, no matter what position or condition in life we may have. Because what calls to us is timeless, the calling can come at any time in life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with the idea that at critical times all of life can just hang by a thread. Michael Meade then describes the ancient rites of passage that involved the “upavita” or thread of life.  The upavita was imagined as the red thread of passion that runs within the blood of every being. It was also envisioned as the green thread of existence that is dancing through the endless windings of the vegetal realm. Either way, it's the vine of eternity that secretly unites all living tendrils and embodied souls to the eternal web of life.       When tied onto young people as part of a rite of passage, a red thread or cord indicated that each life is sacred and symbolized the capacity of each person to awaken to how and where they are threaded to the eternal chain of being. The upavita thread symbolically pulled each novice away from the concerns of daily life in order to connect them to something deep inside themselves that also connected them to something deep and enduring in the world.   At this troubled time on earth, when life itself seems to be unravelling, we are all in a collective rite of passage and need reminders that we are each secretly tied to the web of life in a meaningful way. We each have an inner thread of spirit or genius that connects us to a calling and a purpose that makes our lives meaningful, no matter what the conditions of the world might be.   The symbolic thread of life reminds us that we are all in this together; but also  that meaningful change comes from following the inner thread of imagination woven within us to begin with. Like initiates in ancient rites, we can follow our thread  and become messengers of the unseen, able to bring forth both ancient understandings and new ideas when everything seems to be hanging by a thread.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the report on the increase of perfectionism in the world. Whether caused by comparisons found on social media or notions of meritocracy, young people especially suffer from perfectionism.  Beginning with the idea that something perfect is finished, and therefore closer to death than to life, Michael Meade turns our attention instead to the value of trouble. Not just any trouble, but the importance of getting into the right trouble, the kind of trouble intended to grow our souls. The right kind of trouble serves to awaken inner capacities we didn’t know we had and draws upon resources we didn’t know were there.  Recent studies in education indicate that the right kind of struggle makes all of us more resilient, creative and less anxious in general.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode considers the record breaking heat waves that are currently plaguing many parts of the planet and how easily we can feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of worldwide crises.   “In radical times like this, great emotions can fall upon us in a similar way that massive storms and heat waves now settle over entire areas of a country. The overwhelming facts about disasters in the world around us can quickly become overwhelming emotions inside our individual psyches. We can suffer increasing levels of stress and anxiety, even if the place where we are living is not one of the hotspots in the moment.   Collective anxiety is a real thing that connects to our primal sense of fear, and like fear, anxiety can be contagious and spread. Over time, collective anxiety tends to exacerbate our sense of feeling insignificant and impotent in the face of radical changes in the world. How can a single, fragile person do anything to affect or change conditions that are so big and beyond our control?   The German word weltschmerz translates as “world pain” or “world weariness.” It carries the sense that while we feel inadequate in the face of world troubles, our individual pain is linked to the pain of the world. What troubles the world also troubles us and we don't have to be in tragic circumstances ourselves to feel how others are suffering.   We can be deeply affected by the pain and grief in the world because basic empathetic qualities are part of being human. We feel heightened levels of stress and worry when we see a loved one suffering, but also to some degree when a stranger is suffering or in fear. In terms of weltschmerz, we not only sympathize, but we can realize that all humans are inextricably linked to each other, and that each person's suffering easily could become our own suffering.   On a psychological level, we each have our own unique experiences of fear and anxiety that arose early in life, when we were in fact helpless in many ways. The trouble with emotions like fear and anxiety is that they don't simply go away. If they are ignored or denied, they tend to take up residence somewhere in the body. One way or another, we continue to carry our own sense of fear and anxiety about being left alone and being helpless in the face of things beyond our control.   In spite of some prevalent ideas, emotions turn out to be part of the natural dynamics intended to keep us awake and resilient in the face of ever changing conditions of life on Earth. Engaging with our deepest emotions turns out to be a necessary part of the transformations that need to happen both individually and collectively. Emotions are part of the great outflowing of life, without which we cannot truly live or meaningfully change and grow.   It is the role of feelings and emotions to reveal the inner stirrings of the human heart and soul. In that sense, emotions are the necessary and mysterious turbulence without which we cannot truly tell if we are alive or not. Emotions serve as a vital link between body and mind, between spirit and soul. They move us because they carry massive amounts of energy. And in that sense, emotions can be understood as messages coming from a deeper sense of self and soul within us. Thus, ignoring or repressing an emotion amounts to shooting the messenger and missing the message coming from the deeper self that knows what we need and how we must change.   The ancient idea that transformation is the aim of the soul rests upon the understanding that there is something essential within each of us that we can turn to, and continually learn from, that we can draw upon repeatedly and grow from continuously. When this knowing self within us becomes more conscious, a surprising sense of inner stability can be experienced, even amidst the chaotic circumstances of life. At the same time, inner resources previously unknown to us can become available.   And that's why ancient poets and thinkers could say, hold on to your particular pain and suffer your anxiety for those too can bring you in touch the inner spirit and knowing self that has been secretly present within you all along.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth is about accepting elements of fate in order to find the threads of destiny that are woven within our own lives to begin with.   “Each child must be born to a particular family, yet the purpose of each soul rises from a different conception and aims at a different destination. Each has a family legacy of some kind, yet each also has a deeper birthright waiting to be discovered. Elements of fate and destiny press upon us from within and also call us from outside the walls of the family complex. Unseen threads and inner designs secretly pull us into the crossroads where meaningful choices must be made.   There are many paths and endless plot lines in the great skein of life and therefore many instructive stories. Two of the great tales from ancient India describe the different ways in which the Buddha and Lord Rama found their path of destiny. In the marketplace of life, Prince Siddhartha had to first encounter death before the Buddha waiting within him could be born. For Rama, being a ruler in this earthly realm was his true destiny. But he had to become homeless and wander far before he could find a truth that was within him all along.   An eternal thread has been woven within each of us. It secretly ties us to a path of meaning that can lead to a way of being that is our true inheritance in life. In order to find that holy thread, we must experience a brush with death or some other fateful encounter that allows our greater life to grow. Encounters with fate and brushes death are intended to awaken people to the exact value of the gift of life that they have been given. Not the life given by one's parents, not usually the life defined by the marketplace, not even the life attributed to famous spiritual guides or cultural leaders.   The point is to find the path already set within one's own soul from before the time of birth. The point is to be willing to undergo a little death in order to find the genuine thread that can lead to one's natural destiny. A wise sage once said: ‘The search for truth is really a search for one's true self. When people truly understand who they already are, they realize that they are part of the Divine. This understanding cannot come from the intellect alone, nor can it be given to you by others. It must come from a place deep inside you. All truth comes from within. The search for truth is really the search for one's true self.’”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with excerpts from an article entitled “Men Are Lost.” The writer describes how many “young men struggle to relate to women, don't have enough friends…and lack long term goals.” In addition, recent data shows that “men now account for almost three of every four deaths of despair that come from suicide, alcohol abuse, or overdose.” In what seems to be “a widespread identity crisis,” the question becomes: What does it mean to be a man?  The article concludes with the notion that “people need codes for how to be human. When those codes aren't easily found, they'll take whatever is offered. If left unaddressed, the current confusion of men and boys will have destructive social outcomes in the form of even greater resentment and radicalization.”   Michael Meade suggests that “throughout history, there have been many different and even divergent answers to the question of what a man might be. There are levels to the question and therefore, levels to the answers. I fear that, in the midst of radical cultural changes, trying to solve the confusions about masculinity at the level of a collective agreement on terms, might result in greater divisions rather than unifying solutions.   At a personal level, our deepest fear can be that there is nothing inside us, that we have no real meaning and can have no purpose in this world. That kind of deeply felt sense of meaning and purpose cannot simply be gained from collective ideas or societal definitions. When faced with the need to support and guide young men facing an uncertain and often unwelcoming world, or young women for that matter, the issue becomes not simply how they might be defined by the outer world, but what they might discover in their own inner world.   At a level which is deeper and also more specific, the core issue becomes awakening to the inherent values in the individual soul. In this old way of understanding what's at the core of each person, what is really missing in moments of despair is a lack of connection to one's own soul. Soul is the connective tissue of life that keeps mind and body together and soul secretly connects the masculine and the feminine in each of us.   We are most lost and feel most abandoned when we have lost touch with our own souls, with our innate style and way of being. Since it is likely that the current confusions and polarizations that trouble the world will get worse before they get better, the answers most needed are likely to be found in the depths of our individual souls. For, the soul is the part of us that is not simply overwhelmed by the challenges, disappointments and confusions of life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth deals with perfectionism and the inner dynamics of gifts and wounds in the human soul. Some people were told as children that they had to be perfect; others were told they were somehow defective and could never be perfect. Either way can cause a kind of spell and a life-long struggle with perfectionism. And sadly, the stress of trying to be perfect can lead to great feelings of anxiety and aching feelings of low esteem, to eating disorders, sleep disturbances and an overall dissatisfaction in life.   The ancient Egyptians had a saying that a beautiful thing is never perfect. In other words, the pursuit of perfection diminishes the amount of beauty, not just in the person, but also in the world. So, ancient artists would often place a defect in their creative works to honor the necessary imperfections of life on Earth. In making earthenware they would leave an area unglazed or allow a small crack to be seen. This imperfection in the vessel made each piece unique, a one of a kind creation never to be repeated in all of time, made more valuable and more beautiful by virtue of the imperfection. Similarly, we each inherit some inner gold that can only shine through the cracks and faults that also exist within us.   In the strange balance that exists on earth, we are each unique and gifted in some way and we are each born with a wounded side, like a limp that holds us back or a weak wing that makes taking off in life more difficult. Being a whole person turns out to include accepting the holes and the faults in ourselves.   In the end, our wounds are intimately bound up with our gifts. In accepting our inner wounds and learning to carry them, we find parts of ourselves that are not wounded. And then it turns out that the wound becomes a kind of womb from which we can continually be reborn.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 540 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Michael Meade uses current scandals in politics along with the recent discoveries in science to show how we live in revelatory times. We are in the midst of a cultural, political and emotional catharsis, yet for those willing to look behind the veil, an apocalyptic period can mean a time of revelation on many levels. The archetype of apocalypse involves a “lifting of the veil” in which many scandals and misdeeds become uncovered, while at the same time both ancient wisdom and new knowledge can be discovered.   We are living through a period of great change that involves uncovering things that have been concealed and discovering or re-discovering things that have been hidden from sight. In mythological terms, we are caught in a cosmic moment of time turning over in which both destruction and creation are involved and one can turn into the other in a moment. Familiar structures may collapse and once vital systems may fall apart, yet forgotten patterns and barely imagined designs can be on the verge of being revealed.   We live in two worlds and belong to more than one dimension of life as our souls are secretly attuned to other levels of reality. One level is visible and observable to the human eye, while the other level is mostly invisible and seemingly ephemeral. And yet this second level is essential to our wellbeing, and critical to our understanding of life on earth.   Something ancient and knowing about this world, that has survived many catastrophes, is trying to catch up with us and become known by us again. We are in a struggle, not simply for the future of time, but rather for the presence of eternity. If we are to help uncover and discover ways that allow the earth to renew itself and help human culture to be reimagined, we must become capable of eternity again.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 535 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Despite the narrowing of mind and loss of imagination that characterize much of modern life, we each still have an old knowing mind within us. Not the mechanics of the brain that contemporary science seems obsessed with, but the ancient mind untouched by the passage of time, the intuitive and instinctive mind, which knows both basic survival and great consciousness and awareness. This original mind is logical in its own way, that is to say it is mytho-logical, it is psycho-logical, and it is cosmological at the same time. Mind is not simply the brain, but a poetic unity in the soul of each person born.   We are each involved in a unique life experiment, the meaning of which is hidden exactly where people prefer not to look - in the surprising inner life of our self and soul. Part of becoming conscious of this original mind and indigenous inner self includes an instinctive sense of belonging, belonging to great nature, belonging to the song of creation and the hum of the cosmos itself. Just as a fish utterly belongs to the sea, our original self belongs at once to the great sea of heaven and to the deep ocean of the unconscious. An expansion of individual human awareness is the basis upon which meaningful changes and a potential renewal of collective society ultimately depends.   The original mind tries to become known to each of us and keeps trying to return things to their origins, in order to find original ways to survive the disasters of life and the confusions of culture. When we fail to live out the knowing presence deep within ourselves, we also deny the presence of the living world and that causes the world to have less presence and appear to be slowly dying.   When we imagine the uniqueness of each soul as part of a greater unity, we can see how true consciousness of the part leads to a greater awareness of the whole. The original self within us is the source of forgiveness that keeps offering us second chances to awaken no matter how long we have been lost on the roads of confusion. Waking the individual self and soul also awakens some potential in the world. When the inner light of the soul awakens us from within, something also comes alive in the world around us. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 525 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with the surprising story of a spiritual seeker who meditates and fasts and abstains in order to know the divine and serve something that transcends the common fate of human experience. After many austerities, the god Vishnu grants his wish and gives him a mission. Somehow, on the way the seeker forgets the divine errand he was on and becomes immersed in the dramas and delights of earthly life. It will take a shocking wake-up call to return the seeker to his conversation with the divine.   “Life is the necessary illusion from which we drink, as well as the turbulent waters in which we drown again and again. That is the truth as well as the illusion of it. We are each on an errand for god. And the great beauty of this world requires that we both forget and at times remember it.   The two worlds are close to each other. And a person can cross from one to the other in a single step. That kind of crossing over can happen at any moment, and can be precipitated by seeing beauty or waking with a compelling dream. It can come as a sudden shock or a hard knock. At times, it can also be found through spiritual devotion and practice.   Each wake-up call is an opportunity to return to our soul’s conversation with the divine. Strangely, we may be closer to an awakening and a true turning point when we reach the end of our rope and feel that all has been lost. At that point, we either fall apart or else find again the thread of destiny that pulls everything together and opens the path before us.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 525 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Surviving modern life requires learning to navigate a clash of worldviews. People look at the same facts, yet draw radically different conclusions. On one hand people carry different worldviews; on the other hand, many people remain unconscious of the fact that they carry a limiting worldview. Collectively we find ourselves in uncharted waters in terms of the future of the planet and in unmapped territory in terms of human culture. In that sense, the biggest problem we face involves the need to change our entire way of viewing the world and our place in it. We need a better worldview at the collective level, but we can't simply make one by good intentions or by trying to forge general agreements. When we are deprived of the symbols and patterns needed to shape a coherent worldview, we are thrown back upon ourselves. And that can be the calling within the crisis. Any renaissance of imagination and great vision must first arise from the depth of the individual soul, so that the collective vision is formed by the awakening of many souls inside the collective. A genuine awakening involves not just a change of mind, but also a change of heart that leads to a place of awareness that had been previously beyond our comprehension. This deep sense of transformation involves the understanding that there is something essential within us that we can turn to and learn from, that we can draw upon and grow from continuously. We are being called to be part of a transformation of life on Earth that is already secretly underway. For, the story of the human soul has not fully been written, and the future of the Earth has not been decided.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 525 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners atpatreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade explores how inside of each of us is a mostly hidden, mostly golden and mostly eternal image and aspect of being similar to the gold that is buried in the Earth. In seeking out this inner gold, we meet egoic resistance and must find ways to break the ego’s shell to tap the deeper wisdom within. Along the way, part of what opens this territory is a courageous act of facing death, for a death of the ego is required in order for the deeper self to emerge.    You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 520 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.     Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth

On this episode, Michael Meade turns to a myth from Mesopotamia that tells how the genesis of mistakes, as well as the source of conflicts comes from the shadow of doubt felt by the primal god at the beginning of creation. Surprisingly, the origin of what troubles the world to this day comes not from an original sin by a creature, but from a seeming mistake on the part of the creator.   At this troubled time when people feel painfully polarized and come to believe that we live in different worlds, we are actually living in the same story. Creation stories typically show how division was part of the world from the very beginning. In mythic terms, the tension of opposites hints at a hidden third element that not only relieves the tension, but also renews life at a deeper level.   The effect of elemental tension is to stimulate life itself, the purpose of the opposing energies is to keep creation continuing. In following the old myth, it becomes clear that even the presence of great doubts about the future can be seen as part of the creative tension needed to regenerate life in terms of both nature and human culture.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners atpatreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode illustrates how myths are not intended to be believed in, but exist to be learned from. Myths are forever things that offer endless meanings to those willing to open their hearts and minds to the living mystery of life. Yet, even though it is the original language of our soul, myth has become the forgotten language.   The “once upon a time” incantation that often begins a story is an evocation of a pregnant moment that can open to things eternal that ever wait near the doors of our perception. Awakening to the stories woven into our souls can turn us into seers and soothsayers able to receive knowledge from the past and able to perceive guidance for the future. When we awaken to our true nature, we also awaken to the myth trying to live through us.   When we break the spell of time's insistent march, we can slip back into the timeless realms behind the waterfall of the present where both nature and myth speak in ancient and surprising ways. We find once again that the language of myth can be oracular and speak to us directly with insights into ourselves and with inspirations about the world around us.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that as everything around us falls apart, the deeper Self and ancient soul within us moves closer to the surface and seeks to become known. For whatever shatters the common patterns of daily life also opens us up to psychological and mythical levels of unusual depth that are not overwhelmed by the divisions and disruptions in the world.   The elements of great imagination and deep spirituality that have become lost in the modern world cannot simply disappear. Rather, what is sorely missing in the outside world waits to be found in the inner realm of being, in the greater sense of Self that is the natural inheritance of each human soul.   The centering and guiding power of the deep Self gives us our innate sense of meaning and instinctive sense of purpose. Without this inner, unifying factor, any meaningful sense of change can become fraught with excess fears and anxiety. Since the world will not quickly settle, we have to look deep inside for a true source of coherence, for meaningful guidance and for finding our true aims in life, which are not deterred by the troubles of the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Michael Meade turns to what many consider to be the oldest known story, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. The ancient tale offers guidance for these critical times, not from the heroic battles or kingly powers of Gilgamesh, but from his later life search for spiritual renewal and the plant of immortality.   The primordial plant is described as “the thing that gives immortality” or as “the flower of life that renews vitality,” can only be found in the depths of the ocean. Thus, a great descent is required in order to find the roots of renewal and the touch of the eternal.   In critical times we all need a taste of that plant that might rejuvenate us and renew the spirit of our lives. Down, back and below us, the ocean of the unconscious holds the treasure of the deep self and soul, the source of our inner life and origin of our spiritual longings.   The soul knows that the full potential of life must be sought back at the beginning, down at the source, where the underlying unity of life waits to be found and be touched again. Our ancestors, going all the way back to before recorded time, found the sacred founts of renewal in forest pools, in the rivers and at the shores where the spirit of life waits to be found again and again. When we allow ourselves to be touched by the deep waters that came from the primordial beginning, time stops, life becomes holy again, and we become capable of wisdom that the old knowers knew.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Gifts and Wounds” that begins on Thursday, May 18.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.      You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth uses deeper meanings of the word catastrophe to frame the tragedies and disasters that currently plague both culture and nature. We are in a deeply wounded cultural condition in which current and historical conflicts that are not fully faced will continually lead to ever greater tragedies. The flood of mass shootings, along with environmental disasters cannot simply be contained by the individual psyche, nor can they just be dismissed. In times of tragedy and upheaval, it is not simply a new world that we need; it is a new worldview that we must find.   Catastrophe can mean “a sudden end” or “a reversal of what was expected.” In ancient theater, catastrophe defined the crucial turning point in the last scenes of a drama. Before the final curtain could fall, the veil would lift to reveal all kinds of plot twists and undercurrents that had been present, but were hidden. Even when all aspects of the plot clearly pointed to an inevitable, tragic ending, a reversal could already be secretly underway. In other words, catastrophic conditions can lead to turning things around rather than a complete tragic ending.   The idea is not to deny the presence of tragedy and loss, but to realize that the great drama of the world includes twists of fate that cannot be predicted and revelations that only appear when the end seems near. Even at the edge of despair we can awaken to a deeper vision and greater understanding that has been trying to become conscious all along.  In these catastrophic times, events can go either way. Either they can lead to a fatal downfall or else to a surprising turn of events in which the saving elements and hidden capacities for renewal become revealed on both individual and collective levels of life. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Gifts and Wounds” that begins on Thursday, May 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode focuses on the tension between fear and Eros, between widening societal divisions and our innate instinct to connect and find unity. The struggle between fear and Eros or fear and love is an old one, for one would separate where the other would unify. When fear becomes the dominant collective emotion, it can permeate an entire culture and divide all the people. When we feel surrounded by fear, the danger is that our souls will shrink and life itself will be diminished.   An excess of fear separates us from each other, but also divides us within ourselves. We become isolated and cut off from our inner nobility and from the creative capacities of our souls. When people fail to live the life of their soul with its instinctive Eros connections, the world becomes diminished and the garden of life becomes overburdened with the remains of unlived lives.   When the enemy becomes fear itself, only boldness, imagination and Eros can save us from it. Eros or love is the antidote to fear and the way in which people can find a deeper sense of imagination, and a greater vision of what is needed both for survival and for feeling connected to each other again.   What we love as well as who we love connects us to the life-enhancing energy of Eros and to the original force of creation that wishes to continue. An old proverb states: What we love is the cure. That we love is our connection to ongoing creation. We are being called to imagine the world anew and to open to how our own souls can grow and blossom in greater ways that might contribute to the re-imagination of community and the healing and renewal of the earth.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Gifts and Wounds” that begins on Thursday, May 18.    Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.       You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.    Learn more and join this community of listeners atpatreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

There are certain, critical moments that say directly to us: You must change your life. Collectively, we are in time when great changes are necessary; yet the idea of truly changing is too fearful for most people. On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade tells a surprising story from ancient India in which a fearful tiger suddenly awakens to its true inner nature and becomes transformed. It turns out that learning about one's true self can be like approaching a tiger. The authentic self has beauty and unique markings. It has power and an intensity of presence similar to the fierce brightness of a tiger. Awakening the deeper self also reveals an inner sense of nobility that can shift fear to awareness and replace uncertainty with a living sense of purpose. In mythological terms, the less people awaken to who they are in essence, the greater the amount of fear in the world becomes. If we are to find some way through the cascade of crises that currently threaten the world, we must face our deepest fears, open our hearts and begin to see with the visionary eyes of our tiger self. When the inner eyes of our hearts and souls open, we begin to see the world as we were intended to see it, and in so doing, find ways of transforming our lives that also help to transform this troubled world. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode offers an honoring of the living Earth as a continuous source of nourishment for the soul and the spirit as well as the body. It begins with recent scientific discoveries about ultra-low frequency sounds coming from all corners of the earth. This phenomenon, termed the “hum of the earth,” fosters a ceaseless droning at a level too low to be heard by the human ear. When viewed through the lens of mythology, rather than the theories of science, many origin stories depict a living world that is conceived in sound with each thing having its own vibration. In the beginning was the sound that became the song of the earth, which continues in the whispering of the trees, in the winged nation of birds singing in the skies and in the mysterious incantations of whales in the oceans deep. One ancient chant in particular has great bearing on the story of Gaia as the living world and on the recent discoveries of the hum of the earth. Being both a sacred chant and an origin story in the oldest language on earth, the Gayatri Mantra connects each soul to the ever-sounding song of creation and to the hidden unity of the cosmos. Repetition of this mantra was said to inspire wisdom and beauty in the heart of each person and help bring awakening and fulfillment. In this ancient way of seeing and singing, we each become part of the hum of existence and the song of the Earth, which is part of the hymn of the spheres and the endless song of the cosmos that continually renews the living world. The ancient knowers used all kinds of methods and arts to remind us that we are but one step or one song or one breath away from finding the thread to the center of ourselves and to the center of the Earth. And because the center turns out to also be the beginning, we are always on the verge of tapping into the original resonance of creation and the ongoing song of the living Earth. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode examines the ongoing plague of mass shootings and growing tragedy of gun violence in America. Michael Meade uses a teaching tale from ancient Africa to show what happens to a culture when people refuse to face up to dangers that can turn any public place into a site of tragedy and unnecessary death. An old idea states that it is the same to live in a tragic time as to be in a tragic place. We live in tragic times, but by now, anyone can find themselves in the midst of gun violence and great tragedy in any place in the United States. Mass shootings have happened in banks and in grade schools, in churches and in movie theaters, in nightclubs and in synagogues, at universities and at concerts, in shopping malls and dance halls and the list goes on and on. It is our mutual fate to be alive in tragic times; yet when we fail to grasp the nature of our fate, we become ruled by it. If we deny or try to escape our fate, we simply contribute to the hardening of it. And right now, America is going through a hardening of minds and hardening of hearts in which some people come to value guns over children and choose continued violence over safety and healing. A culture that begins to deny the tragic presence of death will end up denying the value and meaning of life. Unless we change, our mutual fate will be ever more tragic. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events  You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.

Michael Meade turns to old myths of Proteus, the Greek deity from whom we get the term protean, which can mean “changeable” but also “primordial.” To say that we live in times of change is an understatement; to say that we live in “protean times” can be accurate and prophetic. In Greek myths, Proteus was a wise old sea God, both a shapeshifter and a source of prophecy. He was able to rapidly transform himself into many shapes and would only reveal hidden truths to those who could capture him and hold him fast. As the original source of prophecy, Proteus knew all things past, present and future. For the genuine prophet can bring back lost truths and ancient wisdom from the past, as well as provide revelations of the unseen future. Paradoxically, deep memory includes the future and true prophecy involves the past. We live in times of upheaval and loss and we also live in prophetic times. As the world around us goes through many disturbing transformations, it is helpful to know that the next world is hidden inside this one and that lost wisdom and hidden truths wait to be revealed. The stories of Proteus offer metaphors for working with mythic imagination and the archetypal energies that can reconnect the wisdom of the ancients to the moments in which we live. When that happens, the wholeness that is the antidote to the fragmentation of the world can be found again and the origin potentials of life can be restored. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and special discounts on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a consideration of the value of folk tales that remind us how easily that which can rejuvenate our souls, and reveal inner wisdom can become lost in the churning seas of time. Ancient wisdom tales survive the upheavals of history and can provide esoteric threads that trace back to the original sources of awakening, rejuvenation and revelation. Beginning with elements of folk myths that appear in epic tales like Gilgamesh and teachings found in the Bible, the Torah and the Koran, Michael Meade follows threads that lead back to the mysterious figure of Khidr, known as the Green One or the Verdant One. Khidr represents the sea of inward knowledge and was called the long living one, who continually rejuvenates himself. As such, Khidr can be seen as the embodiment of archetypal powers of imagination and wisdom, and as a personification of the process of spiritual transmission. Some stories say that every saint is visited by Khidr, while other tales say that everyone will be visited by Khidr at least once in their life. Khidr stands for the archetypal energy inside each person which can lead them to their own experience of revelation and awakening. Whoever follows Khidr, they used to say, can seek freely amongst the many teachings that exist in the world, but can also find their own way to the place where the two seas meet, a place also known as the center of one's own heart, where the energy of one world pours into the other, the place where the opposites can meet, the place where creation began, and ever seeks to begin again. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.

Michael Meade considers ancient understandings and practices related to the Spring equinox as well as deeper meanings of the word “balance.” What ancient people intuitively knew that modern people need to rediscover is that the balance of the earth and the cosmos is tipped towards ongoing creation and a renewal of life at both predictable points and at critical times. While many ancient people felt aligned with cosmic rhythms and nature’s ways, modern people tend to be cosmologically disoriented and primarily connected to history. This loss of the instinctive connection between the cosmos and the human soul has profound effects on life on Earth at this time. Without a felt sense for a living cosmology, life can seem increasingly random and pointless. The sense of cosmological dislocation diminishes our sense of self as well as our reverence for life. Rituals of renewal, some of which were enacted at the time of the equinox, sought to stop the loss of energy and imagination that leads to a decrease in the quality of life. Rather than being a fixed point of balance, the Spring equinox would also be a crack in the wall of time and an opening in the cosmos, through which people could assist in the renewal of life, not simply by celebrating, but also by helping raise the quality of life energy on Earth. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade describes how “entering the modern world at this point is like entering a rite of passage that is already underway. In that sense, we are in a “liminal phase” that requires a transition, not simply from one place to another, but from one way of seeing the world to another way of seeing and being in the world.” Liminal refers to a betwixt and between period in which we become radically disoriented and repeatedly confused. Yet, in a liminal condition we can also find aspects of ourselves that are otherwise hidden. We can open our eyes and our hearts to the possibility of becoming not just a different person but a greater, more conscious, more creative person. Whether we call it the “bardo realm” that we fall into, or the liminal phase that we step into, at critical times in life we are called to encounter life's essential mysteries that wait to be found again, and need to be learned anew. If we frame the radical changes and deep uncertainties that we are all currently experiencing as a rite of passage, we may have a greater chance of finding and integrating a deeper sense of ourselves, as well as the greater values and true ideals of humanity. If we accept that we are in the liminal stage of a collective rite of passage, our fears and uncertainties can become doorways to meaningful callings and transcendent visions. We are being called to leave an old way of seeing the world behind in order to arrive at a new world view and a renewed sense of imagination that can realign human culture with great Nature and the living Earth. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about rites of passage by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.  Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a surprising tale from ancient Africa that involves an eagle and a child. The story reveals how what ultimately soothes our souls is an innate connection to Spirit. Whether we call it the Great Spirit or the great Self within, something greater than ourselves, and yet secretly connected to ourselves, keeps trying to enter the world through our lives. This greater spirit for life has no choice but to enter through the hearts and souls of those living at a given time. As the world all around us rattles and seems to fall apart, we have the opportunity to see the world with what ancient traditions called the eyes of the heart. It makes sense that when the eyes of the heart try to open, the wounds from early life, which also reside in the heart, become stirred. In that sense, the way of the heart in troubled times involves healing wounds carried within us, while also finding visions trying to enter the world and bring healing on a greater level. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode considers the ancient idea that during extreme times the earth becomes plagued with an overshadowing of the light and a darkening of the way that blocks the path to awakening and dims the dream of life. “When we reach the point where we cannot turn back because the world as we knew it is already gone, then we are standing at the edge of time, on the verge of the unknown. At that point, the only way to continue is to cross over to what the ancients called the Far Shore, the Mystic Reach or simply the Otherworld. What we desperately need now is the same thing that ancient seekers sought; that is the connection to the otherworld and place of origins that has been lost again and again. We can learn many things from the methods and the ways that ancient people found for crossing the river of life. Yet, we cannot simply use the same crossing places or borrow wholesale the methods that they devised. For, the point is not simply to seek the paths of the ancients; but rather to seek that which the ancients sought. While this has happened before, each age must bring forth living symbols that connect the time bound world with the realm of the eternal. When the Wheel of Time turns over the danger of collapse and dissolution grows greater in the daily world and at the same time a balancing imagination and energy for healing and renewing tries to awaken in the human soul. At the edge of time, even a small effort in the direction of the Otherworld has a greater effect in tipping the balance of life than at any other time." Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

This replay of a popular episode focuses upon the idea of destiny as an essential part of humanity through which each soul is called to follow its own star and true aim in life. However, the consideration of the word destiny also leads to some confusion about its historical associations and its original meaning. One thing leads to another as concepts about etymology or the study of words become entwined with ideas of mythology and the study of stories. Michael Meade suggests that language has its own genius and that each word can also be a story that branches out from root meanings to many associations with other words and other concepts. Similarly, each person has their own genius, the inner spark and speck of star that forms the original constellation of their soul. This inner spark connects us to our natural way of being, but also to our North Star that secretly tries to guide us further on the path of our own destiny, as we all participate in the spinning of the world, the turning of the spheres and the song of the stars of creation. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Michael Meade considers the current threats to nature and the earth from the perspective of an ancient re-creation myth from the Mantaco people of the Amazon. After the entire world has been burned to ashes, the only survivors of the catastrophe struggle to revive life on earth. Surprisingly, they are able to resuscitate life by drumming upon a piece of charcoal and dancing until a green tendril emerges from the charred remains of a tree. The tendril turns out to be the “original ancestor” or Tree of Life from which the forests quickly grow back and eventually all of life returns. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.  

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade addresses the paradox of time and timelessness in response to the latest Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The annual bulletin uses a Doomsday Clock to measure the proximity of worldwide catastrophe on earth. For the first time, scientists report that we have reached a point just 90 seconds away from the stroke of midnight, the closest we have ever been to the time of Apocalypse on Earth. The doomsday clock is not a computer-driven report, but a symbolic statement from scientists about the urgent risks we all face. It shows only the last quarter of an oversized clock, indicating how much time has already been lost and how near we are to the supposed end of time. Yet, the clock as symbol goes far back to ancient traditions where the circle of time represents the wholeness of life. When time is only counted as linear and literal, it can be seen to come to a final end. Yet, the circle of time involves a greater imagination that includes the eternal source from which all of life and time originate. In that view, time repeatedly comes to an end, only to start over again. We may well be close to the end of an era and suffering the demise of a world view; but in mythological terms we are not simply at the end of time. Over the course of time the sense of “apocalypse” has been literalized and now popularized to the point where it characterizes our darkest fears and fantasies. Yet, as an archetypal image apocalypse presents a time of great extremes and a tension of opposites that includes both end and beginning, both collapse and renewal. The time that people cannot find these days must be sought in moments of timelessness through which time itself renews. It is in such moments that ancient wisdom can be found and new world views can appear. For, it is not simply a better world that we urgently need, but also a better world view.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 485 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Meade addresses how "the callous death of yet another unarmed black man at the hands of police has torn the age-old wound of racism open and revealed the process of dehumanization in American culture.” Humanity is not a cloak that one group of people can claim or deny to others. Humanity is the word we use for people as a whole, as in “we the people” and all the people on earth. If some people are denied their part in the whole, that leads to a deterioration of the whole and a diminishing of all the people. During the same time that videos of Tyre Nichols being brutally beaten by police were released to the public, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was cynically attacking African American study courses that are critical for understanding the pervasive and deadly effects of systemic racism. Surprisingly, during the same moment of crisis the world's largest organization of geneticists made a public apology for its role in promoting eugenics, the false theory used to claim that one race is biologically superior to all others. The apology from geneticists came amidst a rise in hate crimes and mass killings, often inspired by false narratives of white supremacy. It came after the Human Genome Project produced a scientific consensus that all humans worldwide carry 99.9% of the same genetic material while sharing a common origin about 300,000 years ago in Africa. As human beings we live and we die in the context of the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. The acknowledgement and apology for condoning and promoting a false idea and belief about the nature of humanity can be seen as a step on the path of learning at what can be a turning point in our mutual story on the road of awakening and healing. Humanity is not a cloak that one group of people can claim or deny to others. Humanity is the word we use for people as a whole, as in “we the people” and all the people on earth. If some people are denied their part in the whole, that leads to a deterioration of the whole and a diminishing of all the people. We are being called upon to use the essential threads of our own lives to reweave a culture that becomes genuinely inclusive of all of humanity. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade shows how a dream can be diagnostic and prescriptive, as well as predictive. A dream of facing a threatening series of waves leads to a consideration of living in a “liminal space” created when a flood tide of changes strikes both nature and culture at the same time. Denying the extreme conditions troubling the world at this time does not stop the waves of change crashing all around us. And thinking or feeling that we cannot handle it does not spare us from the effects that penetrate, alter and rattle us personally as well as collectively. Part of the prescription for surviving times of radical change involves learning how to bend and bow when facing overwhelming changes coming from the outside. Another part involves finding our own inner rhythm, natural way of being and genuine way of seeing when the world around us suffers waves of change and repeated upheaval. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Ancient stories depict how each person born carries a precise medicine in their soul. In order to find and activate the inner medicine we need to face and even embrace our inner wounds. This episode explores how each soul is called to awaken more fully and each meaningful path eventually leads to the territory of gifts and wounds. Genius is said to hide behind the wound; living soulfully involves accepting our wounds as the source of our greatest gifts. Our psychic wounds secretly connect us to the transcendent function in the soul, so that what wounds us also initiates and transforms us. In that sense, the inner wound can be seen as a womb. In going through the wound we become reborn as an initiate on the path of healing. The imagination of initiation becomes a source of curative powers that can serve to awaken the soul of humanity and help us reconnect to the heart of nature. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this excerpt from a premium episode, Michael Meade follows a myth from ancient Ireland and weaves together cosmology, psychology and philosophy in order to open the soul's vision and catch the fish of wisdom. Rather than being abstract knowledge, "embodied wisdom" is shown to be both immediate and eternal, both spiritual and soulful. You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

On this episode, Meade explores how as the outer world suffers conflicts and collapse, a balancing imagination and energy for healing seeks to awaken in our individual souls. This in-born code of the soul provides us with a gradient or guideline that can aim our energy as well as protect our lives. The soul’s gradient is a mythic umbilical that plumbs to the ground of our being, but also connects us with the soul of the world. When in touch with this guiding line we can draw upon the resources and creative imagination of our souls. When out of touch with the gradient, we not only lose the natural vitality of our being, but can also suffer a loss of soul. Each life calling involves a deeper connection to the inner-woven thread of destiny that leads us to the paths with heart and helps to aligns us with our natural dharma, our way of contributing to life and serving the world.  Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade considers how each time we unlock the original pattern within us we align with our inner gradient and find a path with heart and soul. In contrast to the sense of a heroic journey that leads to treasure in the outside world, the road of awakening involves a pilgrimage to the genuine center of the deep self. What is so often sought in the outer world waits to be discovered in the soul’s inner realm. As things fall apart all around us, we have to find the center of the deep self within us. Meade then tells the story "The Tiger’s Whisker", a famous tale of a woman who must face a living tiger in order to cure the ailment in her soul.  What begins as a small village tale opens up to become the endless territory of the human heart that harbors an old sage, a fierce tiger and the need to find a cure for love. In a world troubled with collective anxiety and growing fears, it is helpful to know that on a path with heart, fear is the guide and what you truly love is the cure. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with an ancient myth from a tribe along the Amazon River. The story tells how the inner soul of each person travels at night all the way the center of the cosmos. Once there, the soul receives a message that is brought back and shared with the tribe as a dream.  Meade draws on this link between the individual soul and the cosmos to describe how ancient cultures imagined each person to be born with a speck of star hidden in their soul, buried in their heart, just waiting to become a person’s “guiding star.” Each person is intended to contribute presence and meaning to the world and liberation happens each time we become conscious of the contents of our soul.  We are here to awaken and learn how to express the uniqueness of our souls, and if we do that we add presence, being and creativity to the world and we become irreplaceable. If we don’t find the meanings hidden in our souls, the world loses presence and people who have no idea who they are come to dominate society.   Rumi wrote that: “The world inside is bigger than the world outside.” Meade argues that in this time of darkness and conflict, hatred and bigotry, we have to revive the sense of the inner magnanimity and enduring brilliance of the individual soul. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of how cosmology used to refer to all of the ways that humans could imagine the creation of the world and the subtle connections of the human soul to the living cosmos. “As above, so below” is the ancient mantra that places humankind in the middle of the cosmic story as an essential link in the chain of being. As individuals we may properly feel frail and small; yet we belong to more than one dimension of life. And the dark time of the year is the traditional time to recall the interconnection between each of our souls and the starry universe around us. The word solstice means the “sun stands still” and ancient people imagined that the extremes of darkness harbored a timeless moment of stillness as the sun seems to stop just in time before the gloom becomes too great to recover from. Traditional cultures all over the world imagined that the midwinter sun needed conscious help from human beings in order to turn things around and bring back the light. These are not simply the dark days of winter; but the dark times for everyone; especially for those who truly care for the souls of other people, and for the well-being of the sacred earth we all live upon. Even as we can feel more physically separated from each other, and just when we can feel even more frail and small in the face of all the worldwide troubles we face, there may be no better time to light a candle, make a prayer, find a song to sing in the midst of the darkness, in order to help bring the light back. In facing the darkness together in a spiritual sense and in the ancient way, we can also find again and realign with the divine spark of life we each carry. For the soul has its own inner light and each soul is secretly connected to the song of the earth, to the Soul of the World, and to the indelible spark of life and light that can only be found in the darkest hours and the darkest times. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth addresses the whirlwind of feelings that can be stirred when the complications and uncertainties of contemporary life become accelerated by the growing darkness, the holiday season and the end of the year. Beginning with the idea that “making beauty gives us a place to stand,” Michael Meade weaves together a nest of poems that invoke the breath inside the breath, the stillness at the heart of being and the ancient soul of the world. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Sunday, December 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with a consideration of darkness as a necessary precondition for the creation of the lighted world. The symbolism of endless dark waters in creation myths represents the pre-formal, amorphous darkness that is also the hidden source of all life and all light. In cosmological terms, the presence of eternal night and the coming of the light are the primordial pairing. They are the twin generative principles that formed the origins of creation and continue to shape the living world. “Yet, in the modern world, the almost universal presence of artificial lights virtually turns night into day. Instead of surrendering to the return of primordial darkness each evening, a manufactured realm of superficial illumination triumphs over natural darkness. Instead of appearing as an essential, uncanny, potentially spiritual presence, night becomes reduced to being the temporary absence of incessant incandescent light. In this surface oriented, secular world of continuous light, the ancient sense of night as a necessary realm of reality that meaningfully alternates with the edge bright empire of day becomes lost, specifically lost in the light. Ancient people had an instinctive connection to darkness as a place of potential creation, revelation and divination. Thus, night was often seen as the most spiritual time, the dreaming space that cleanses the light before it returns to light up the day again. As we find ourselves facing the darkest time of the year again, we also find our true selves in the dark times on earth again. At the same time, darkness is the essential background for the process of birth, death, and renewal, which is the underlying mystery of life in the cosmos, in nature and in our own souls. This greater understanding of the importance of darkness was part of all ancient cultures. In many traditions, Winter Solstice involved a willingness to stand in the darkness in a prayerful attitude in order to help bring the light back to the world.” Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Sunday, December 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade turns to ancient stories of the Titans in order to understand all the tragic events and extreme behaviors that keep making the world a darker and more dangerous place. There are times when myth and fact coincide, when events in the common world become mythical in shape and scope. In such radical times, myths can offer ways of understanding what otherwise appears as completely unprecedented events and impossible dilemmas. In mythological terms, we are facing the end of an era during which everything can seem to collapse back into chaos and darkness before a regeneration of the dream of life can occur. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the themes and ideas in this podcast by joining his new online series “Light Within Dark Times” that begins on Thursday, December 1. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade answers questions about the sources and meanings of grace and gratitude. Gratitude was called the parent of all virtues and is connected to the natural nobility of the soul. We are most human and most alive when we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given, no matter how hard or how dark the world around us may become. Gratitude involves a flowering of the soul in which even a small sense of gratefulness can generate a full sense of abundance. In this way, feeling grateful and expressing gratitude helps to bring grace back into the world. Occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be, can rekindle our spirits and ease our souls. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Light Within Dark Times” that begins on Thursday, December 1.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this series, and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a report that shows that younger people, voting in larger numbers, made the difference in an election that many viewed as a struggle for the future of democracy and the direction of modern culture. At the same time, a large study found that as people become older they tend to go from being optimistic about the future to being realistic about the present, and from there to being pessimistic about the future. The tendencies towards pessimism become more pronounced in times of uncertainty and radical change, as many seek to return to idealized visions of the past. The trouble now is that the radical changes affecting and threatening all levels of nature and all aspects of culture make a return to the past, not just unwise, but also impossible. Michael Meade turns to old ideas that show how a culture renews itself from both the dreams of young people and the visions of the elders. Traditional societies around the world had the idea that youth and elders were secretly connected through a deep sense of imagination that can hold past and future together. Seen that way, finding visions that heal the divisions in society and help realign human culture with nature cannot be the sole burden of young people. When older people act out of self-interest or fear, they fail to have foresight and genuine vision. They also fail to make the kind of sacrifices that connect them on one hand to young people, and on the other hand to wise ways of thinking and understanding. The idea is not simply to age well, but to become wise in ways that draw upon the archetypal knowledge that sustained our ancestors and can also provide guidance for the future. When we find ourselves at the end of an era, when even the young can feel older than they otherwise would be, it becomes important to reconnect to the capacity for genuine vision that exists in each person. For, imagination can go places that logic does not know and that fear fails to find. Youth and elders meet in places where imagination blossoms and the inner eyes of the soul open to genuine visions that can unite the old with the new, the past with the future.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Light Within Dark Times” that begins on Thursday, December 1.    Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this series, and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the fact that what was once known as “election day” has become a stormy election season as social polarization leaves many outcomes too close to call. The political balance hangs in the troubled air as if to make palpable the sense that the world itself is divided. It is our mutual fate to be alive during a period of extreme divisions and radical changes that endanger the balance of nature as well as the stability and sanity of human culture. In troubled times, everyone is affected by the storms of life as what happens in the outside world also stirs the internal depths of our own psyches. The deeper self or soul within us knows that politics alone cannot solve the global issues that threaten both culture and nature; yet avoiding the political storms and cultural divisions can secretly add to the collective turmoil. Michael Meade tells an ancient myth that places the first human ancestor right in the middle of the tension between self-interest and serving something beyond oneself. The circumstances may change, but life has always been hanging in the balance with humanity implicated in the outcome. Once again, humanity faces the elemental tension between simply consuming the resources of life and becoming a true friend of nature and the earth. The ancient story shows that at crucial times a small change can lead to a great effect that can shift the underlying patterns of both nature and culture. When we listen to the subtle voices that can come from any area of life, it becomes possible to awaken more fully to the creative impulses that sleep within our souls. Despite feeling overwhelmed by the dramas and challenges of change, our hands are never far from finding again the old practices that help us weather the storms, while keeping our hearts open to the language of nature, and the inspiration and imagination trying to enter this troubled world through each of our souls. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Gratitude and Grace” on Thursday, November 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with a report on the radicalization of a radio station where extreme political views began to be mixed in with the local weather and local news. Ironically, the name of the town was Normal, as if to underline the sense that “normalizing” extremist movements and disinformation causes any sense of what might be normal to be a thing of the past.   The dramas and conflicts happening locally are also occurring throughout the world as the rise of social media, where anything goes, becomes added to the strong arm politics of gaining power by any means necessary. In the midst of all the misinformation, fear mongering and rabble rousing, people don't know what to believe or who to trust. To be alive at this time means to be a witness, willingly or unwillingly to the upheaval of the world.   The conditions in which we find ourselves are the conditions through which we must find our true selves and the genuine purpose of our lives. If we accept that we live amidst a great metamorphosis that involves all levels of life, we can become more able to tolerate and endure the troubling and tragic events that threaten both nature and human culture. In times of upheaval we are being called, not to return to normal, but to find a greater imagination as well as a deeper understanding about life on Earth.   As things fall apart in the outside world, a deep sense of purpose and meaning seeks to awaken within us. The inner alchemy of the human soul includes a settling self-center, but also resilient resources of great vitality and transcendent creativity. Ancient traditions held that the individual soul could be the source of “vertical imagination” that allows us to reconnect the inner with the outer, the upper with the lower, the older with the younger, each other with one another, and help bring human culture and great nature back into balance.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Gratitude and Grace” on Thursday, November 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with Michael Meade turning back to an ancient myth and a five thousand year old fragment of writing in order to find wisdom that is missing in the modern world. Both the myth and the words of the ancient scribe offer solace and encouragement to people feeling helpless and hopeless about contemporary life. “Like the ancient writer, we live in tormented and troubling times, as all of life's conflicts and uncertainties seem to surface at the same time. Like the anguished scribe, we cannot deny the turmoil of the world. And yet we cannot simply bear the weight of it as frail human beings. As was the case for the ancient scribe, this time of cultural upheaval is also the time of a struggle for the presence of the human soul and a battle for the soul of the living world. The counterweight to the feeling of having the weight of the world on our shoulders and being subjected to collective fears and anxieties, involves an awakening of the inner soul. For, the soul is always on the verge of some great awareness and on the edge of awakening to more meaningful ways of being. As the underlying and unifying force of life, the human soul carries an inheritance of resiliency, and a capacity for innovation in the face of disaster. The idea of drawing on our own inner resources and from there contributing to the healing and renewal of the world is essential to avoid feeling powerless, and helpless in the face of the storms of life and the radical changes of the worldwide upheaval at this time.”   You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart and Soul: Living Wholeheartedly in a Troubled World” that begins on Thursday, October 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.

In conjunction with Michael Meade’s new online series “Heart and Soul”, we are replaying a popular episode that relates to the timely issues and themes of the medicine of the heart and the redeeming energy of the soul.   Each heart can be mined for courage and each soul is imbued with creative imagination. Often we must be driven to our deepest inner resources by fear, grief and despair. Yet, what the heart loves is the cure and what cures the human heart can also help heal a broken world.   The realm of heart and soul is the source of all the arts and spiritual traditions. Meade reminds us of the old idea that “therapy treats my condition and art treats the condition of the world”. What follows is an intricate weaving of poetry and ideas that leads to the kinds of medicine waiting to be found in the depths of the soul.   You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart and Soul: Living Wholeheartedly in a Troubled World” that begins on Thursday, October 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, drawn from a live event, Michael Meade explores an old idea that genuine maturity depends upon our ability to withstand and understand the tension of the opposites. The word individual means “un-divided,” not divided on the inside and thus able to remain true to ourselves when under great pressure from the outside world. Although we can feel crucified by opposing sides and torn between conflicting ideas, transformation is the secret aim of the tension inside life itself. For just when everything seems to fall apart, what seeks to become more conscious is the eternal youth in the soul that sustains the dream of life and the wise old sage in the heart of each person that serves as inner teacher and guide. Inner wisdom involves a creative unity in which the eternal youth and wise elder within us help us hold together the past and the future and find meaningful ways forward. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart and Soul: Living Wholeheartedly in a Troubled World” that begins on Thursday, October 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, edited from a live event, Meade considers how as accepted patterns dissolve and uncertainty grows, we become more vulnerable to feelings of insecurity, anxiety and fear. While the rational mind reels from the irrational blows, it becomes necessary to find a sense of wholeness within ourselves.   Wholeness and unity are what all healing seeks, but a genuine transformation requires a descent to the underworld of the soul. There we find that our woundedness is not a static state, but rather a dynamic condition through which we incarnate more fully. In going through the wound the greater self within us is revealed.   When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable we become more open and a deeper wisdom can come to us and live through us. Each act of healing our inner splits contributes to the healing of our divided world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

As a metaphor for human nature, the Acorn Myth suggests that each person comes into the world with an innate shape and an inborn style intended to grow a particular character. Thus the soul, rather than being a blank slate, tends to be more like a garden already planted and seeded in a certain way.   On this replay of a popular episode, Meade suggests that the inner seed of the soul arrives already packed with knowledge. Specifically, it knows something of its own way of being and, if the shell of the seed can be cracked, the nature and shape and aim of a person's life can become revealed.  Call it a myth, an open secret or an eternal truth, the sense of each soul having a seed story it came to live resonates throughout the cultures of the world.   As the world around us becomes increasingly unstable and chaotic, we need to turn to the inner shape and core imagination of our own soul to find stability, meaning and purpose.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this excerpt from a premium episode, Michael Meade talks about key issues that affect transformation in our lives. He considers core complexes in family and culture and wades into the territory of deep emotions. The word complex is trying to point out that when we have a particular kind of interior trouble, the issues are complex. Deep down, we all want to change, he says, and each crisis and obstacle we encounter serves to spark the initiatory transformation our soul longs for.   If we change one small thing in our lives, we affect everything and everyone around us. In following our deep calling in life, we naturally encounter struggles. Yet it is these exact struggles that become the turning point for our lives to become bigger, for our wounds to find healing and for our destiny to be revealed.   You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

This episode begins with the idea that “each family acts as a vessel of fate with an inherited plot that begins all over again each time a child is born. For the infant is not born into a vacuum as much as dropped into a particular stage of a family drama that has been playing out over generations.” Meade considers the issues of “family fate” that can restrict and obscure, but ultimately provoke the discovery of the threads of fate and destiny in each person’s life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.  

This episode considers that when the world seems to be falling apart and life seems increasingly polarized, it becomes necessary to tune to the inner voice that is secretly connected to the pulse of nature as well as to the realm of the divine. The problem is not that there is no resonant voice inside us, not that there isn't something trying to awaken in each of our souls; rather the problem is the issue of tuning in.   The old idea is that once we tune in to our own inner nature, we also become aligned with the world behind the common world, with the realm of the Muses who are sending us signals that turn into music or songs and poetry, or ideas waiting to be found and be shared to bring greater understanding. Through tuning in we become the living instruments whose breath is needed, whose song is required in the struggle for meaning and love. Not because we are inflated or believe we are simply special; but because we are tuned in to life and attuned to our own hearts and souls. Soul is the connective tissue of life. Without a sense of soul, our own lives can fall apart, the inner parts turning discordant, the song of our being becoming silenced.   Yet, when inspired by the eternal youth within us and encouraged by the old sage in our heart, we learn how to become instruments for healing and finding love. Then, we use our breath and our voices to shape places of genuine communion where we can all come together, even with our uncertainties and fallibilities which strangely contribute to the resonance of the healing song trying to be found.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 440 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode considers the problem of resistance to change from psychological and mythological viewpoints. While we are facing radical changes that threaten both nature and culture, we are also challenged by the dilemma of human resistance to change at both personal and collective levels. The issue is not simply a lack of commitment to change. Rather, resistance arises precisely where we have the best intentions to change. The problem becomes all the more difficult as we may not be aware of our resistance because it occurs at an unconscious level. Attempts to meaningfully change can feel like an internal struggle between opposing parts of ourselves; one part that overtly wants change and another part that covertly works against it.   What some psychologists call an internal “competing commitment” or a subconscious “immunity to change” was once known as the fatal flaw that leads us away from our soul's natural goal of transformation and spiritual realization. In terms of mythic imagination, each soul has an original intention waiting to be found and a life dream waiting to awaken. And each soul also has its fatal flaw, a kind of reverse attitude that works against that original intention.   Genuine transformation develops from the inside out. Thus, when change becomes essential, not just for ourselves, but also for life on earth, we are called to awaken to the true aims of our authentic selves as well as to the fatal flaws that work against meaningful change, both personally and collectively.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 440 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Michael Meade tells two ancient tales about what keeps our hearts captive and restricted rather than being open, loving and wise. Our hearts can be capable of great love and true courage; yet when opportunities come for us to change and grow, old fears awaken and the inner walls tend to tighten as the ego or little-self within us restricts our hearts from opening more fully. In the same way that something greater than ourselves once wounded us, something greater than ourselves seeks to awaken through us, but some practices for letting go may be required for true awakenings to occur.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Re-creation and Renewal on Earth” on Thursday, August 25. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 435 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Heraclitus said, “It is while we are trying to change that we find purpose.” On this in-depth episode, drawn from an event recording, Michael Meade suggests that because we live in a time of change, if we can allow ourselves to participate in the change, then we can find meaningful purpose that awakens the heart and leads us in the right direction in the world.   The idea of a threshold is something that exists before one state and another, before one place and another. Most of us are collectively on that threshold betwixt and between the letting go of the old view of the world and the full stepping into the new world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Re-creation and Renewal on Earth” on Thursday, August 25. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 435 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a Celtic myth about the mythic mother that attends each human birth and the ways we each can be “spellbound” is specific ways. “Spells appear in the important areas of our lives; especially in the areas where meaning and purpose must also be found. Fate marks the spot where the limitations in our lives insist on being known, but also where the deep imagination of each soul resides. Breaking an inner spell allows us to be touched by the grace of the world. It releases vital life energy that otherwise remains trapped and reveals creative imagination that makes us able to serve our deeper self as well as the world.   When a person becomes self-denying, self-rejecting or self-neglecting, they have fallen into an inner spell and forgotten core connections to their inner radiant self. Each person suffers their own version of being a motherless child, each an orphan in search of a meaningful task or a path of awakening that can lead to a genuine transformation. In the strange way of the world, it is the orphan part of us, the long abandoned, often rejected element of our own soul that finds the true inspiration of our lives. From the dark cave of confused feelings and traumatic memories comes the next phase of the story trying to unfold from within us. If we can accept and even forgive ourselves, we can be redeemed by the gift of Mother Nature in the form of the inner Milk of Inspiration.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Re-creation and Renewal on Earth” on Thursday, August 25. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade uses the ancient metaphor of the pearl that begins as an irritant inside an oyster, that grows from within to become the treasure worth diving deep to find. “When the world fragments and falls apart on the outside, the underlying unity of life has to be found in the depths of the individual soul. Soul is the missing ingredient that has to be found again or the Spirit of life itself can seem to drain from the world. The iridescent pearl can symbolize both the life trying to grow from deep within us and the mysterious force that begets all of life to begin with.   An old Latin word for pearl means “unique,” attesting to the fact that no two pearls are identical. But also pointing to the fact that no two souls are the same as each soul born is unique and valuable in its own way. Those who claim to be perfect and have no visible defects are like manufactured pearls. Their glow does not come from the mystery that turns blemishes into beauty or inner wounds into gifts. Those who desire pearls must dive into dark waters and risk the isolation and confusion of the depths. Similarly, those who would find the inner pearl of the self must enter the deep waters of soul and face the darkness found within. They must crack the hard shell of the little-self and come to know themselves from the inside out. Ascent and upward movement can eternalize, while the downward movement of conscious descent personalizes and makes things real.   Finding the inner pearl of the soul requires great vulnerability, thus many fear and avoid the cracking and breaking open process. Yet, each time the shell of the little-self opens further, the inner radiance and iridescence of the soul can shine through. The deeper the connection to our inner self becomes, the stronger our connections to both nature and the divine also become. When the inner pearl of the soul becomes revealed, something also comes alive in creation. That's how things change here on earth, from the inside out, as the revealed value of the individual soul contributes great value and vital energy to the transformation of life trying to happen on Earth.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade revives two ancient myths about the origins of death in order to consider the core mysteries of life on earth. “Little deaths occur throughout the course of life; attending to them and learning from them adds to the vitality of one's own soul, but also to the vitality of the world. The presence of death is a tactic of life, and a little death is needed whenever life would grow greater.   The world is a mystery trying to be revealed. How we solve the mystery of the world and how we solve the mystery of our own lives matters. And each matters more at the end of an era, when all aspects of life and come into question. It's as if we need an ecology of both life and death in order to help sustain the delicate balance that allows both great nature and human culture to continue.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the fragmentation and breakdown of political parties and social lives currently happening in countries around the world. Michael Meade then takes the issues of upheaval in both nature and human culture to the deeper levels of psyche and soul where archetypal energies of transformation and healing try to enter the world though each of us. In accepting that we are in the midst of a great turnaround that involves a shift of the underlying archetypes of life, we become more able to tolerate and understand the tragic events that threaten both nature and human culture. The question becomes whether the pattern of collapse and renewal takes place simply through the raw energies of the unconscious or does a transformation of life on earth develop with the conscious awareness and assistance of people living at this time.    In times of radical change, a different kind of courage is required, not simply the courage of our convictions, for that can contribute to the polarization of opposites that grips the daily world. Rather, what is needed is the courage of our imagination, which is considered to be the deepest power of the human soul and which secretly is connected to the original potentials of life and the living Soul of the World.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on Thursday, July 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade draws upon a story about the fall of the earth into darkness that is thousands of years old, yet strangely parallels and can help illuminate the worldwide crises that currently trouble all of our lives. Churning the Milk Ocean is a vast myth depicting how beauty, meaning and wisdom become drained from the world as all levels of life become more divided and chaotic.   The story focuses upon two important things that become lost and cause the earth to diminish and the world to grow dark. On one hand Lakshmi, the goddess of wisdom, beauty and abundance has disappeared from the earth. On the other hand, “amrit,” the eternal elixir and source of all healing has fallen to the bottom of the ocean of existence.   Churning the ocean is a surprising tale of lost and found on a cosmological scale, intended to remind us how the most important things can disappear, yet not be completely lost. It is an eternal drama in which only a strange cooperation between the opposing forces of dark and light can bring back the lost powers of creation and the medicine needed to sustain both nature and culture.   It's a grand tale about the struggle between the forces of dark and light at a cosmic level. It involves a pantheon of ancient gods and a horde of demons, as all levels of life become caught in a struggle to find again, and sustain, the balance of creation.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on Thursday, July 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This replay of a popular episode of Living Myth begins with a consideration of how contemporary patterns of polarization can lead people to feel discouraged and defeated when it comes to meaningful change. Although “the twin offspring of this age of polarization may be radical uncertainty and rampant absolutism,” Michael Meade approaches the problem, not by trying to reduce it, but by making it bigger in order to better understand it.   “Back at the beginning of creation, the original polarization was between cosmos and chaos. And in some sense, each occasion of polarization is connected to that original tension of opposites. Understanding it at any level requires understanding it at that original level. Rather than seeming like the impending end of life, the tension of opposites secretly hints at a hidden third that not only relieves the tension but also renews life at a meaningful level.”   The hidden third or middle way that can shift the tension of opposites to a creative level is not the same as notions of a middle path that avoids excess and extremes by following reason and moderation in all things. Nor is it simply the path of negotiation, bi-partisanship and compromise. The old imagination of a middle way involves a living center, a moving middle and golden mean that can loosen the restrictions of time and place and opens us to moments of wholeness and renewal.   “While the two poles of a polarity may seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly parts of a hidden unity. Existence itself is an essential unity appearing as a duality, and thus genuine change and transformation are the secret aims of the tensions inside the opposites and inside life itself.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on Thursday, July 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the recent Supreme Court decision to take away the rights of women to make their own reproductive choices. The current insistence on extreme abortion bans and restriction of human rights, not only favors one religious viewpoint over many others, it also misrepresents the origins and history of abortion and reproductive rights.   Michael Meade traces the issues of abortion, “personhood” and women’s right to choose back to ancient ideas of “ensoulment in the womb” and the surprising roots of religious thought and practices in early Judaism and Christianity.   Since ancient times the core mystery of life has been symbolized as the womb of the cosmos or of mother Earth, that is also embodied by each woman. We have all been born into the mystery known throughout time as “birth, death and rebirth” or as “life, death and renewal.” Despite the narrowing of minds, the hardening of hearts and the harrowing of wombs that some insist upon, life remains a mystery that does not seek to be simply defined or controlled or be reduced to fixed dogmas or intrusive laws.   As the poet Goethe once wrote, "so long as you have not experienced this, to die and so to grow, you are just a guest on this dark earth." This is not the time to allow those who would take away the rights of others and presume to judge for everyone to make decisions about life and death for the rest of us.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on July 21.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Amongst the increasing number of divisions that we now find in the contemporary world, one of the most damaging separations develops where the modern world becomes separated from, and at odds with, the realm of nature on one hand and what people used to call the “world behind the world” on the other hand. The old wisdom shared by many traditions stated that what is broken or wounded in this world can only be healed by the Otherworld, the realm of spirit and great imagination. In denying or dismissing the nearby realm of the otherworld, modern cultures wind up, not just fenced in by fixed ideas and failing ideologies, but also blindly separated from the very sources from which healing might come.   As humans we are mythic by nature, living on the verge of wonder and but a step from the otherworld all the time. We visit it in sleep and become the bearers of dreams. We fall into it whenever we fall in love. We ascend to it when we allow ourselves to be inspired and lose touch with its grandeur and deep wisdom whenever we insist that things be seen as only factual, measurable or simply rational.   The betwixt and between, intermediary realm appears in all kinds of myths and stories when the main character has become disoriented or lost and does not know which way to turn. Typically, that is the place the helping animals or the wise old woman or the bird of spirit appear as guides, teachers and healers and Intermediaries from the otherworld. As characters in our own stories, we find ourselves in a time of great upheaval and in the betwixt and between condition that comes at the end of an era. If we accept the condition of “not knowing” and being vulnerable, we move closer to the otherworld which has always been the source of imagination, healing and potential renewal.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade considers how when the certainty of the world collapses around us, the danger of cynicism, isolation, and becoming numb inevitably increases. In looking for antidotes to these feelings of overwhelm and separation, he draws on themes and ideas including cosmology, genius and our inner gifts and wounds.   If you would like to hear the rest of this episode, and receive additional podcast content, you can become a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

Currently, the common understanding of “streaming” means “listening to music or watching video in real time as part of a continuous stream of data.” An older idea describes a cosmic stream of essential knowledge constantly pouring through the world. This much needed knowledge about life on earth flows freely, but at such a fast rate of speed that most people cannot catch it or even see it.   On this in-depth episode, drawn from an event recording, Michael Meade suggests that when it comes to finding ways to respond to the climate crisis and all the humanitarian issues in the world, we may have to find ways to slow down and tap into the ancient stream of wisdom.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.  

This episode brings a focus to the danger of feeling discouraged or overwhelmed by the pressure and weight of all that troubles the daily world. Something that is both primordial and enduring is trying to catch up to us, trying to inspire us and rejuvenate us so that we can become conscious keepers of the dream of our own souls and contributors to the healing of life on earth. In the dark times, when it's easy to become discouraged or lose our sense of self, we have to find our connections to the otherworld of great imagination and the underlying spirit of life itself.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Myth and Emergent Truth” on Saturday, June 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 420 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade laments the agonizing loss of 19 innocent children’s lives in the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The shocking report of at least 12 more mass shootings during the long weekend that followed reveals a growing flood of needless deaths that signal, not just a loss of innocence, but an increasing loss of the value of life itself.   Sadly and tragically, those who manufacture, market and use politics to sell guns intended for war are part of a deadly cultural script that predicts an ongoing funeral march. And behind that script is a growing nihilism, as if the automatic weapons are shooting darkness from a void of inner emptiness that masquerades as power. Sensible gun laws are needed to stop the flood of killings; but also as a way to begin restoring a collective sense of the meaning and the value of each individual life.   Each mass shooting broadens and deepens the river of sorrow. Each mass casualty event marks a tragic turning point in which we either choose to continue the collective funeral march or take steps to substantiate a greater sense of the meaning of life. The only meaningful outcome of all the needless deaths and tragic loss of life can be that we find our way back to a deeper sense of compassion, to a more inclusive sense of humanity and to a greater sense of the meaning and value of the gift of life.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Myth and Emergent Truth” on Saturday, June 11.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 415 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.

This episode considers the darkness and division which permeates so much of contemporary life through the lens of the liminal or betwixt and between stage of a traditional rite of passage.   We live betwixt and between a past world that is fast disappearing and a future that looks increasingly dark. When the outside world becomes full of darkness and uncertainty, the soul expects us to turn inward as we would in the soul-searching way of a vision quest.   When a society won't stop and face the darkness it has created; when a culture won't face up to its internal wounds and patterns of divisiveness, not only does it go blind to healing ways, but a distortion and diminishing of life itself occurs. We are in the dark phase of a collective rite of passage in which the meaning and the nobility of human life must be found and become known again.   In the dark times it is not the simple sense of civility that our souls long for; rather it is the older sense of “communitas” in which we see the deeper self in each other that we desperately need. Just as the spirit of hope must repeatedly be found in the depths of our souls, the lost sense of shared humanity must be retrieved from the darkness around us in order for age old wounds to be healed and meaningful visions of the future to arise.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Myth and Emergent Truth” on Saturday, June 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on this workshop and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 415 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with how easily we can feel overwhelmed and discouraged as each day seems to bring more fraying of the fabric of culture. As tragic violence keeps recurring and the weaponizing of religious beliefs and political ideologies increases, it becomes ever more important for us to find and hold the inner thread of life. “Amidst all of the unraveling, we have to each find a thread and figure out how to help re-weave the world.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Hope and Imagination in Dark Times” on Thursday, May 19.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 415 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with the uproar occasioned by the Supreme Court draft opinion on overturning Roe v Wade. Michael Meade turns to ancient stories in order to find ways to imagine breaking the spells of division and find ways that ”we each can bring a piece of lived truth and learn ways to more consciously inhabit the same story again.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Hope and Imagination in Dark Times” on Thursday, May 19.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 410 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade looks at the current climate of polarization, fear and division and considers how we can navigate current challenges. In considering the root meanings of fear, Meade shows how in facing where we fear to go, we can find a greater sense of calling as well as a deeper connection to the soul of the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Hope and Imagination in Dark Times” on Thursday, May 19.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.      You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 410 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

“We live in a world in which it is easier to divide things than unify them. Politics and polarization are both connected to the root word ‘pole’ which can appear as a unifying central pole, as in a tent, but can also divide into opposite poles. The unifying energy is there, but is not visible because it is not yet conscious.”     So begins this replay of podcast in which Michael Meade considers the essential dynamic of opposition leading to a new state of unity.  In order to uncover the deeper sense and meaning of opposition and polarization, Meade goes to an ancient practice from a small tribe near the Amazon River.  The ideas about the wise and the crosswise aspects of the soul helps elucidate the sense that in our individual lives and our collective experiences we are often looking for and longing for the third thing that is the medicine we most need.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of  considers how Earth Day and the oldest traditions of Easter are secretly connected. “One of the open secrets trying to be rediscovered at this time is that a deep capacity for renewal exists in the depths of our own souls, just as it resides in the unseen depths of the earth itself.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.   Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Meade, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.

This episode of Living Myth considers the increasing sense of weight and pressure that comes from all the tensions and conflicts in the world. Michael Meade uses ancient ideas of fate and destiny to shift the way we might understand our collective fate at this time and also open the sense of individual calling and destiny.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense of incurable wounds found in both the tragic war in Ukraine and within the embattled issues of ever-growing, worldwide climate crisis. Michael Meade turns to ancient understandings of both seemingly incurable wounds and the way new paths of healing are found.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense that “most stories about the future of the world have become fatalistic” and “some great confusion and mass forgetting has fallen like a shadow over the earth.” It then dives into the ancient waters of the soul in search of the source of deep memory and great imagination that was connected to Mnemosyne, once known as the Well of Rejuvenation and the Mother of the Muses.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a  30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade addresses the question of how can we hold things together when the world around us is falling apart. He finds surprising insights and compelling answers in the ancient tales of the recreation of the world known as Earth Diver myths. We live in a world that is falling apart; climate crisis says that, the brutal war in the Ukraine says that, and the fact that almost anything can divide people says that in a painful way every day. It makes sense that it can be hard for any of us to “get it together” during these turbulent times. So, what does it mean to get it together when everything around us is falling apart?   One answer comes from the tradition of alchemy where Coagulatio refers to the element of earth and the process for bringing things together through creative practice. It makes sense to look to things that are stable, like the solid earth beneath our feet. Yet, part of what unsettles us now is that the Earth itself is in danger. How do we, as frail beings in this upside down world, get it together when it is not even clear that the earth itself can hold together?   Surprisingly, coagulatio describes how the creative process begins with facing the chaos and consciously descending into darkness to find the source of renewal. In mythology, the process of conscious descent into darkness appears in the themes of the Earth Diver stories found in traditions from ancient India to Native North America.   Some versions of the Earth Diver myths appear as tales of a second creation or a re-creation that occurs when the created world has become worn and corrupted. Amongst the first peoples of North America, some variants tell of a time when a rend or tear in the world caused a young woman named Earth to fall from the heavens. As she fell there was nothing below except the dark primeval waters; but the birds and animals arranged for her to land on the back of a turtle. Then, the woman who fell from the sky instructed the animals to dive down into the dark waters and find some mud that could be used to continue creation.   Many animals descended to find the mud of creation, but all failed until a muskrat managed to bring a little ball of mud from the darkness below. Then, the woman who fell from the sky took the mud and spread it out in all directions until it became the earth. After that she directed the process through which the earth was seeded with trees, grains and vegetables and other plants.   It is significant that Mother Earth comes from the heavens above, but also generates the creative energy that arises from the darkest, deepest place. When seen as a collective dream of humanity, Earth Diver myths depict the emergence of creative energy and greater consciousness that comes from below. The earth itself, as the source of life ongoing, shows us how to serve creation and preserve life by descending into the unknown or unconscious depths in search of more bits of “prima materia.”   In alchemy, prima materia signifies the primal materials and core energies from which life on earth is formed. Prima materia was also the name of that bit of hidden matter in the psyche of each person which, if brought into conscious awareness, turns out to be what truly matters when the world turns dark. In the other words, something meaningful is trying to emerge from the very confusions and conflicts inside each person’s psyche or soul.   The emergence metaphor continues when the mud of creation is handled by someone at the surface; it becomes activated and begins to grow and spread. In these troubled times, when darkness has fallen over the earth, each of us are potential earth divers. If we would descend into our own psyches, we would find something to bring from unconsciousness into conscious awareness. In that sense, we each have something to offer that can spread in its own way and contribute to bringing things back together again.   Another important aspect of Earth Diver stories occurs where the animals who take on the mission of diving into darkness are not themselves heroic. They possess no supernatural powers and even those who succeed only manage to bring up a bit of the mud of creation. In other words, helping creation to continue on earth is not a matter of willful heroics. In this time of upheaval and collapse, no one is required to save the world. Yet, we each are implicated in the process of diving down and bringing back our bit of the mud of creation, our contribution to ongoing creation on earth.   In some versions of the myth, the woman who fell from the sky was pregnant with twins intended to assist in the continuing process of creation on Earth. Yet, it turns out that the twins are opposites, sometimes described as “good mind’ and “bad mind.” Whatever the good twin does to enhance life, the bad twin does the exact opposite; so that life on earth involves conflicting energies that can become intensified.   Eventually, the twins must face off against each other. At the point of almost losing, the good twin is encouraged by the voice of Mother Earth speaking directly to him, encouraging and reminding him of the importance of continuing creation. Inspired and strengthened by the energy coming to him from below, the good twin wins the battle. Thus, creation can continue; but not even the best intentions or good deeds can cancel the opposing energies and darker thoughts of his twin from being part of the world.   At times on earth, the dynamic balance between light and dark falters. The darkness in the world grows and begins to shift things back towards the primal chaos at the beginning. During such a shift, the earth becomes plagued with an overshadowing of the light as the forces of arrogance and ignorance expand. There comes to be a darkening of the way that blocks the living path, a faltering of the dream of life ever trying to be born in the depths of each human soul.   In one sense, Earth Diver myths serve as warning tales about the dangers that can upset the entire world. On another level, they offer ways of understanding times like these when the troubles have already become so great as to be worldwide, and so deep as to be existential. On yet another level, Earth Diver stories become teaching tales intended to awaken, to inspire and to embolden each human soul.   Diving down to make conscious our deepest inner gifts shows how we must surrender to a path or a project that requires all our goodness and positive energies, while also bringing to light all the negatives and oppositions within us. In order to be fully alive, we must bring up our best and worst selves, as being tossed back and forth by extreme changes and conflicting issues serves to awaken the sleeping potentials in each person's life.   In that sense, we either add to the growing darkness in the world or else become agents of creation and help bring back to consciousness the essential life forces and the healing energies that have become lost. In that kind of consciousness making process, we rejoin creation. We learn again how to serve the Earth, which is secretly trying to inspire and embolden us to become part of a radical transformation in which the earth revives and the world renews itself again.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a  30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with the deepening of the war in Ukraine and the growing sense of anxiety in the world. Michael Meade turns to depth psychology to consider instinctive ways of coping with insecurity, uncertainty and the tragedies of life.   "If a person wishes to be sure of the road they tread, they must close their eyes and walk in the dark." That statement comes from St. John of the Cross, who also coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul.” Often, I wake up thinking about the hordes of people who now find themselves treading through darkness, like those caught in the ever-deepening tragedy of the war in Ukraine.   An old tension exists between the presence of tragedy and the loss of innocence. And there's a way in which this clearly unnecessary, coldly destructive and brutal war enacts a daily assault on human innocence. When the Russian army heavily bombed a maternity hospital, people all over the world saw images of a very pregnant mother being hurriedly carried through smoking rubble on a makeshift stretcher. The sense of tragedy deepened when desperate attempts to save the mother failed and both innocent lives were lost.   At times, I try to turn away from the ongoing tragedy, but mostly I cannot manage to turn away. It's as if averting my eyes might add to the anguish and abandonment of all those who are suffering. Part of me wants to see all the video clips of the thousands and thousands of children being hurried fearfully into an unknown, uncertain future. And part of me wants to witness with my own eyes the filling in of mass graves in the city of Mariupol, where an actual witness said that “the land is now soaked in blood, bitterness, and despair.”   When I do close my eyes, I continue to see some of the tragic images. I also see and feel the darkness that fell over me and our country during the Vietnam War. I was torn open at that time and become torn again each time an unjustified war turns the living world upside down. When I hear the dark propaganda and the massive misinformation coming out of Russia, I viscerally remember the distortions and lies used to deny the actual death tolls and the massive destruction unleashed during the Vietnam era.   To this day, I feel compelled to witness war coverage and often fail to know when I've seen enough or how I might find a way of withdrawing and escaping the numbing presence of mindless war. Yesterday, I was at the point of feeling torn between witnessing and turning away when an interview with a Ukrainian man, who lives in war torn Ukraine but is Russian in origin, caught my full attention. He spoke passionately about trying to inform his parents in Russia about the horrors of Putin’s war. He then described how distressing and enraging it was to have his own parents tell him that he was not telling the truth when he described all of the destruction and unnecessary death that is tearing Ukraine apart.   His parents get their news from Russian state television and believe that the Russian army entered Ukraine to drive the Nazis out and create humanitarian corridors to safety. After expressing outrage about the fact that the Russian army had actually attacked those trying to use the humanitarian corridors, his passion shifted to a sense of compassion for those trapped under the spell of many years of propaganda.   He explained that he came to realize how important it remains, for both Ukrainian and Russian people, that he and others find ways to communicate the ongoing tragedy to their parents and older relatives. He described how they were continuing to reach out and expressed genuine hope that the Russian people could awaken from the heavy spell of propaganda. I found myself released from the immediate tensions and searing presence of the war. I also realized why Karen Horney’s theories about human anxiety and instinctive coping strategies had been on my mind.       Horney was an early follower of Sigmund Freud, but broke away in order to consider the psychology of infants and parents, which she thought had a great bearing on how we cope with fears and anxiety later in life. She suggests that each infant must develop a strategy for coping with “basic anxiety.” She also argues that we tend to use the same coping strategy from our infancy when we encounter crises later in life. In other words, there is a psychological connection between intense fears and anxieties that overtake us in life, and the way we survived traumas early on.   A big surprise came when Horney pointed to “parental indifference” as the root cause of basic anxiety early in each life, but also a key factor in neurotic conditions later in life. A child doesn't have to be treated harshly or be severely rejected in order to experience anxiety and insecurity at a basic level. Indifference on the part of parents at critical points is enough to trigger a deep sense of anxiety that seems to be an inevitable human condition.   That kind of parental indifference seemed to be present in the experience of the man in Ukraine whose parents would not accept their own son's evident feelings of fear, anxiety and loss. In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the attitude of indifference must be present in millions, including the parents and relatives of those actually under attack. At the same time, that kind of indifference appears in people all over the world who manage to deny the evident tragedies and rampant injustice that characterize all of the human suffering in these troubled times.   Horney states that the first reaction to parental indifference tends to be frustration and anger. Being frustrated by the sense of abandonment causes a child to protest the injustice by crying out. If the parents respond to this angry cry, the child has found a coping strategy that is likely to become their habitual response to life's trials and troubles.   When a child’s “aggressive reaction” does not bring the help they need, they are thrown back into basic anxiety and fears of abandonment. In order to survive, the child must then suppress the anger and somehow win the over the parents. If this strategy works, “compliance” becomes the preferred means of coping for that person. If neither the aggressive strategy nor the compliance strategy works, children cope with basic anxiety by means of withdrawal. In coping with anxiety by withdrawal, the child moves away from the parents, retreats inwardly and tries to become self-sufficient.   The child that adopts the strategy of anger and aggression concludes that “if I have power no one can hurt me.” The child using the strategy of compliance or connecting carries the sense that “if I can make you love me, you will not hurt me.” The child who must cope with a strategy of withdrawal follows the idea that "if I withdraw, nothing can hurt me."   The three ways of coping with basic anxiety can also be seen as three distinct conceptions of a child's inner self. The first being, I am as big as or bigger than the world. The second being, I must adjust to the world. And the third being, I must appear smaller in the world.   These psychological insights ring true, partly because they parallel defensive strategies found throughout the animal realm in patterns of fight, submission or flight in the face of danger. Being conscious of these deeply ingrained attitudes becomes more important as the world around becomes more troubled and both collective and personal anxieties increase.   Part of what intrigued me with the Ukrainian son trying to communicate with his parents in Russia, was that he seemed to go through all three strategies. At first, he was angry and frustrated and outraged that his parents were indifferent to his suffering and the suffering of all the other people in Ukraine. After that, he went through a sense of withdrawal before realizing that over time a way of compassion would be needed to reestablish some kind of basic connection with parents and other relatives.     As someone who learned the aggressive coping strategy early on, I do not instinctively go to a withdrawal strategy to get some respite or relief from tragic events. But, I do remember that in the midst of intense protests that used aggressive strategies against war, the compelling cry of "make love, not war" would arise as if on cue from the collective psyche. There had to be a limit to strategies that were solely against war. There needs to be a conscious strategy to stay connected to love and mutual care, even in the midst of war.   It seems highly unlikely that Putin or Trump or any of the other overly forceful characters on the world stage, who continually double-down on raw aggression will adopt one of the other modes. However, the rest of us who must suffer through and struggle with the great crises and sorrowful tragedies of these dark times will need to learn ways to keep finding love and building interconnectedness, even while we stand up against the war on humanity, freedom, and justice.   We need to learn new ways to retreat and find refuge for our own souls, just as we pray for those being forced to tread in the darkness of this troubled world. At this critical point in the collective life of humanity, when we are all subject to a cascade of worldwide, anxiety-inducing issues like the climate crisis, the Covid crisis and the crisis of wars against our basic humanity, we each need all three strategies to survive, to heal and to help transform the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

On this episode, Michael Meade addresses the war within the war being waged on Ukraine. In order to justify the cold-hearted attacks on civilians and mindless destruction of towns in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has waged an insidious war on truth in the minds of the Russian people. There are times when it becomes clear that there is more overt suffering in the world. There are times when the suffering of some people equals the suffering of all people. There are times when all of our good intentions and hopes that things will get better are at odds with the world as it is. There are times when helplessness and hopelessness cannot simply be driven from the door. I feel a great sadness for all the suffering and heavy losses befalling the people of Ukraine. I also feel a deep respect for the way so many Ukrainians are standing for the ideas of freedom, facing down the engines of war with a kind of nobility of spirit that can only come from the part of the human heart that values truth, beauty and the meaningfulness of life. As the Ukrainian people suffer from the rain of bombs and reign of terror that Vladimir Putin has unleashed upon them, it can be shown to be not just an invasion of Ukraine, but also an attack on democracy, on the ideals of freedom and on the soul of humanity. For, there is another war, a war within the war, an insidious war that came before the invasion began and that will continue after the current battles are over. As millions seek safety from the mindless destruction of towns and cities, Putin is persecuting other people and prosecuting another war. The war within the war is being waged inside Russian territory and inside the minds and hearts of the Russian people. The warfare undertaken before the invasion involved a massive effort to indoctrinate an entire nation and set them against the world. The shocking military assault could not have begun unless the blitzkrieg against truth had penetrated the psyches of a majority of the Russian population. In the parallel universe where many Russians now reside, Putin's propaganda machine grinds night and day to convince the Russian people that Ukraine and NATO provoked the invasion, that his “special military operation” is actually a liberation campaign to purge Ukraine of Nazis. Truth has always been the first casualty in a war; now wars against truth are waged long before any battles begin. As safety has become ever harder to find throughout Ukraine, truth has become ever more scarce inside Russia. Recently, Putin issued a draconian law that criminalizes any speech that contradicts the official Kremlin line which insists that the deadly offensive against Ukraine is not a war at all. Merely referring to it as a war can put a person in prison for 15 years, making them a casualty of the war on truth. Putin’s state has become a testament to how authoritarian leaders can stage manage false narratives and big lies as the first stage in wars against humanity. Many Ukrainians recount stories of their older relatives in Russia expressing profound disbelief about the war; saying that there is no shelling of Kyiv and that Russian forces are only in Ukraine to help people. The campaign against truth does not spare innocent children either, as those in grade schools receive sessions reinforcing the official government line that the war is not a war, but a special operation intended to save lives. Researchers say that those creating propaganda in Russia understand the grievances and the tendencies of their audience. They know how to make their stories dramatic, but also entertaining. The sad truth that they do embrace is that when people see the same false message repeatedly, it becomes easier and easier to believe it. Being alive at this time, we all suffer a cascade of crises that weigh heavily on our souls. The climate crisis affects the entire planet, the Covid pandemic affects everyone to some degree and the many crises of social injustice affect all of humanity at this time. Yet, the root of our troubles can be seen in the crisis of truth and meaning which can both obscure as well as deepen all other crises. In the war on Ukraine we can see the crisis of truth and meaning being coldly converted into rockets and bombs and methods of destruction that must chill the heart of humanity. Some people talk about a post-truth world as if the repetition of big lies and misinformation can erase the longing for truth and meaning that has been an essential part of humanity from the very beginning. The core ideals of humanity are intended to serve as a light to follow, especially when the dark times come round and we become more exposed to the extremes of life and to the winds of despair. And, we are the current inheritors of the deep human longings for truth, for beauty and for the life sustaining capacity to truly transform. An old idea states that nothing but truth can hold the truth. In other words, we can only hold to ideals like truth, beauty and justice, if we find ways to embody the truth of our own lives. Finding antidotes to the epidemic of falsity, to the onslaught of misinformation, and the weaponizing of big lies, means being willing to be open to radical changes in our lives while finding ways to live in truth. It is not that we each have to be heroic; rather that we each somehow must find ways to stand in the truth of our own lives, in the truth of our own being. In doing that, we begin to rewrite the story of humanity at a time when the entire planet needs a renewal of truth, beauty and the meaning of life. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online workshop “Creative Paths in Chaotic Times” on Saturday, March 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.  You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth focuses upon Vladimir Putin’s tragic invasion of Ukraine and the archetypal pattern of the “negative senex” or sick and dying old king.  Psychologically, the negative old ruler represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness and has become an obstacle to, and even an enemy of, a greater sense of consciousness.    It is the same to live in a tragic time as it is to be in a tragic place, a poet once said. And we now live amongst growing tragedies the world over with the latest being the war in which Russia targets innocents and aims to terrorize everyone in Ukraine. Because we live in a time of mass communications as well as mass casualties, we are all witnesses to the carnage and the madness of war. In that sense, we are all subjects of a cold-hearted attack on all who hold human liberty and human dignity to be essential to human culture. There is a manifestation of the nobility and courage of the human soul coming from the people in Ukraine, who not only choose to fight to save their homes and their sense of liberty, they also enter a battle to save their sense of self in the face of a darkness that can cause despair. And, we are all implicated in that battle; for we all live on the border of  uncertainty, that can in a moment, become the edge of despair. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates a wicked truth about the human condition. For, a single person, should they have enough power and enough darkness in their heart, can dream up a war and impose that nightmare on everyone. Other nations can send weapons and supplies and set sanctions against Putin and Russia, but there is no effective mechanism to stop someone from misusing power, even if they announce their intention to wreak unholy havoc on humanity and the world. I am not criticizing political responses or the meaningful efforts being made to stop mass destruction and potential genocide. Rather, what strikes me in this tragedy is how the psyche and the pathology of one person can hold everyone hostage and then coldly unleash darkness and terror on a massive scale. Before the war started, those who study Putin questioned which side of the autocratic leader would take charge. Would it be the cold, strategic side of Putin’s mind or the ideological, nationalistic side of him that would decide the fate of Ukrainian as well as Russian people? Once the invasion began, the question rapidly shifted to whether Putin was of stable mind. Had he become mentally unstable and paranoid after being isolated by COVID-19? Was he diminished because he had turned 70 years old or was he simply crazy? Some of those conditions may be present, however dismissing Putin’s behavior as crazy obscures important psychological issues and collective energies that are playing out throughout the world at this time. Putin and other would be autocrats can be seen to be caught in the archetypal patterns of the “negative senex,” the sick and dying old king. In mythology, this dark side of Saturn or Cronos appears as the oppressive autocrat who exploits every crisis precisely to acquire more power. The shadow side of this psychological complex appears in the crushing patriarchal figures who seek to cling to power at any cost, just as Cronos ate his own children in order to avoid losing power and control. Throughout history, autocrats have sought to manipulate and control a fearful populace with promises to restore idealized conditions of the past, while restricting freedoms in the present. Tragically, mass communications and weapons of mass destruction have made the powers of manipulation as well as the levels of destruction much greater. Psychologically, the negative old ruler represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness and has become an obstacle to, and even an enemy of, a greater sense of consciousness. There is a symbolic coincidence in which Putin individually represents the archetype of the sick, reckless, autocratic ruler; while at the same time, the negative side of the archetype manifests in other would be rulers and in extreme political parties. Part of the darkness of these dark times involves the negative patriarchal energies that threaten the health and safety of the entire world. This cynical senex energy rejects the feminine capacity for relatedness as weakness, as it has lost touch with intimate feelings and all sense of human compassion and love. The absence of the feminine can be seen and felt in the dryness and coldness of a consciousness that only wants to be in touch with power, while increasingly becoming out of touch with life itself. And yet, the archetype of the controlling and dividing ruler can be initiatory, in the sense that it indicates the nature of changes trying to happen in the human psyche as a whole. The dark side of Saturn-Cronos, with its willful lust for and abuse of power, challenges us to connect with our own deepest feelings of nobility, unity and care for the earth we share. What is playing out dramatically and tragically on the world stage is also being played out as a struggle in the heart of humanity. The instinctive feeling of connection to and support for the vulnerable people of Ukraine is connected to our collective vulnerability at this time. What Putin cannot grasp and will not understand is the expansion of consciousness that is needed to dissolve the rigid, vengeful forces that entrap his soul, the souls of many of his people, and at some level, all of our souls. In the dark times the eye begins to see, said a poet. At the dark edge of fear for the future of humanity and for the earth, a vision tries to form as past and future seek to clarify at the same time. The hope to be found at the edge of despair must involve new ways of seeing the world and our place within it. For, we are also standing at the edge of nobility and despair, in the collective shadow of not knowing what might come next. Although it cannot diminish the suffering and loss occurring to the people of Ukraine, I want to end with a poem from Hafiz. "I have come into the world to see this, the swords drop from man's hands, even at the top of their arc of anger, because we have finally realized that there is just one flesh that we can wound.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “A Self in Training” on Saturday, March 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging times and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth begins with a current controversy over mistakes made in baptism ceremonies in a Catholic church. Michael Meade then considers the origins of baptism and need for reconnection to “…the spirit of life and the transformative powers of nature that is more a matter of lived experience, than abstracted belief.”   A recent news article describes how years of baptisms performed at a Catholic Church in Arizona have been declared invalid. Church leaders discovered that a priest had misused the prescribed text by saying “we baptize you” instead of “I baptize you.” Although the mistake was unintentional, the result is not only that thousands of baptisms are now invalid, but also that all subsequent sacraments for those involved were also invalidated, including confirmations and marriages.   The religious ceremony of baptism can involve a prescribed creed or system of fixed beliefs that must be followed literally and precisely. Yet, an old idea contrasts fixed creeds with the sense of wonder and awe that has more to do with direct, conscious experiences of the spirit of life. By its nature, a creed is dogmatic and fixed, whereas awe and wonder involve immediate, revelatory experiences and epiphanies of the spirit.   Originally, baptism was not a one-time event connected to a religious doctrine, nor was it a matter of anointing the forehead of a newborn child. To baptize means “to immerse or dip in water” and typically this meant full immersion in a living body of water. Baptismal rites go back to ancient times and were intended to connect individual human souls with the spirit of life and the transformative powers of nature. And that is more a matter of lived experience, than abstracted belief.   The issue is not simply that we are in a fallen world that lacks the presence of the divine; but rather that we become caught in fallen visions that collapse the ever-changing wonder of life into that which is simply literal, factual, and historical.   Rather than a single formal event, ancient baptisms might be enacted whenever a person became stuck in life or suffered a disorienting loss. Water was universally considered to be the original source of life, an essential element for cleansing and blessing, but also the reconciling element of nature.   We are at the end of an era and in the midst of worldwide disorientation. As institutions collapse, people have less and less to trust in and believe in. It’s as if belief itself seems to collapse. That can be troubling and disconcerting; yet it is helpful to know that what we most need in times of upheaval is not another system of belief, but genuine felt experiences of the spiritual and soulful dimensions of our lives.   In a sense, we either drown in the splits, conflicts and confusions of our lives or surrender to something greater than ourselves in order to reconcile what divides us within. Like devotees entering the Ganges River and traditional people throughout time, we can immerse ourselves in something seen and felt to be sacred and transformative. We originally came from the waters of the womb and instinctively seek a return to the cleansing waters of reconciliation that can dissolve the hardness of the heart and allow our inner life to flow freely again.   Primary to the awakening of an individual soul is a felt connection to the heart of the living world. There is no one way, no single path for arriving at the point of transformation, that can involve both stillness and change, both loss and renewal. Once we surrender, the water of our deepest troubles can become the water of our own solution. In a mysterious way, our life is re-solved, reconciled and therefore renewed.   There's an old saying that we have each come to life to bring the wonder back. That implies that the wonder natural to life keeps being lost and also that part of our mission in life is to find it again. Of course, one of the quickest ways to lose the sense of awe and wonder is to reduce the living mystery to a system of fixed belief that takes us out of the flow of life, instead of deeper into it.   When the time of collapse and upheaval comes around again, something ancient in us longs to touch the origins of life. No one can prove it, and no one has to believe it, but something in us can return to a still point where our first breath once formed. In that invisible, inner center life can renew itself, and we can become imbued with a breath of wholeness and thereby connect to our original life potentials again.   Thank you for listening to and supporting the podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his current online series “Lead into Gold” and upcoming online workshop “A Self in Training”. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with a fairy tale in which a wondrous tree grows in a palace garden at the center of a realm. The tree at the center produces golden fruit; but each night a golden apple mysteriously vanishes. The culprit turns out to be a golden bird that drops a shining feather before also disappearing. The rest of the tale involves searching for various elements that represent the golden self within us that is the natural inheritance of the human psyche.   In the story, the connection to the golden bird appears as light as a feather. Yet, if we do not pick up the feather of our own lives, we can miss our calling and fall out of the story of our own soul. What was once as light as a feather can become a heavy psychic load, leaving us stuck in depression, in self-rejection or feeling lost. Yet again, the idea of an inner alchemy depends upon the potential for human transformation, which is symbolized by turning the lead in our lives into gold.   You can hear Michael Meade talk more about inner gold and the alchemy of change by joining his new online series “Lead into Gold” that begins on Friday, February 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.  

This episode begins with a shocking controversy in which threats from extremists and conspiracy theorists force the National Butterfly Center to close down. Michael Meade connects the nightmare scenarios of current life with the dark stages of dissolution that precede the transformation of butterflies. There is a great mystery in the metamorphosis that brings a lowly caterpillar to the majesty of the winged creature that emerges from a chrysalis. Since ancient times, humans have used the emergence of butterflies to symbolize the wonder of life's capacity to completely transform. For thousands of years, humans have looked to butterflies as a reassuring symbol in times of change. Yet at this moment, when the entire Earth is in the throes of an uncertain transformation, butterflies have become a symbol of loss rather than renewal, an evidence of collapse rather than redemption. Monarch butterflies migrating south from California must now pass through areas where native habitats are already 95% diminished by modern culture and human interference. Many migrating butterflies find refuge at a nature preserve that sits at the southern tip of Texas, facing the border with Mexico. For decades, the National Butterfly Center has served as a nature sanctuary along the banks of the Rio Grande River. Nature enthusiasts travel great distances to watch the delicate creatures float over the wildflowers in what many have called a magical place. In recent years however, the butterfly center has been thrust into the news and caught in the storms of conflict over immigration policies at the border. Strange as it may seem, it has now also become a landing place for wild conspiracy theories that border on insanity. The troubles began when then president Trump ordered a section of border wall to be built right through the National Butterfly Center in order to the migration of “illegal aliens.” What began as a legal battle over this “butterfly wall,” has recently morphed and escalated as extremists began posting and pushing conspiracy theories about the nature center. The new attack claims that the butterfly refuge is secretly run by “left wing thugs with a sham butterfly agenda.” Extremist groups have asserted, without any evidence, that pedophilia and rampant sex trade were taking place on the property along with illegal migration. A rapid escalation of online and in-person harassment of the sanctuary staff soon followed. Recently, increasing threats of violence by far right extremists and Qanon conspiracy followers have caused the butterfly center to close indefinitely. It seems hard to exaggerate the distortions occurring when butterflies become the center of a controversy promoted by those who deny reality and refuse to accept the need for meaningful cultural change and healing at this time. Part of the irony includes the fact that butterflies are not migratory in the sense of human migrants who might, for any number of reasons, be crossing borders and boundaries. Rather, the migration of butterflies demonstrates the interconnectedness of everything and everyone as well as the capacity of life to continually transform and renew. Those so fiercely threatening violence at the gates of the butterfly center may be caught in a nightmare of their own making. Yet, there is also a nightmare quality to being alive at this time when radical changes place extraordinary stress upon each person. Reports of climate crisis and all manner of cultural upheavals cannot simply be contained by the individual psyche, nor can they simply be dismissed. As the web of life loosens amidst rapid changes, everything can become psychically charged, as if some collective process of shedding and recovery has to happen before a meaningful transformation can occur. The word psyche, often used to indicate the human soul or spirit, derives from a Greek root that means butterfly or night moth. Just as butterflies go through phases of darkness and even disintegration before they can manifest their intended beauty and wonder, the psyche of humanity now seems to be suffering stages of darkness and dissolution on the way to a greater awakening. Butterflies can appear to be delicate and changeable like the human psyche; yet they are also hardy and determined as they undertake epic migrations. Indigenous tribes of the American Southwest particularly revered butterflies whose exquisite presence was considered a miracle, not just of transformation, but also resurrection. The current journey of humanity involves returning to essential connections to our own nature and thereby to great nature; but also to the core mystery of life, death, and renewal, symbolized since ancient times by the metamorphosis of the butterfly.   You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop that begin on Friday, February 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode begins with a dream of two fathers and an ancient tale that opens up the complicated territory that fathers and sons are bound to enter.   Fathers and sons can find themselves caught in the deep patterns and sweeping energies of mythological as well as psychological dynamics. Human fathers unwittingly join a long line of paternal figures that can appear as distant and out of touch or else as demanding, dominating and rejecting. Ancient Greeks had the gods Ouranos and Kronos to represent these extremes of fathering, while Romans called them Jupiter and Saturn.   In psychological terms, they can be called the absent father and the devouring father. Not that there aren't many other fatherly characteristics; but more that in critical moments, one or the other type of energy tends to appear. As inevitable tensions and confusions arise between father and son, a father will often feel pulled to extremes that seem out of proportion to the situation.   At one extreme the Ouranos or Sky father tends to escape the grasp of his children through vague, cloudy answers, disappearing into abstract principles, hiding behind the veil of a newspaper, a computer screen or a personal device. This kind of father may be easygoing, but also tends to disappear at critical times. Like old Ouranos, the absent father elevates above it all, leaving a gap between himself and his children. And that leaves them feeling abandoned and uncertain, unprotected and overexposed when facing the world.   The spirit of Kronos or Saturn pulls the human father the opposite way into tendencies for dominance, angry conflicts, even devouring rages. In myths, Saturn sees his children as a threat to his downfall. In this pattern the child is not avoided, but can be attacked or punished simply for reaching out to father or towards a reward in life. Before the son can even get going, the father snaps at him or cuts him down, having the effect of devouring his natural ambitions and efforts to enter life more fully. If a father refrains from attacking his child, he can still hold the Saturn position through acidic waves of cynicism or the cutting edge of sarcasm.   One type of father moves through the lives of his children like a mysterious cloud pattern they cannot hold on to, disappearing just when they need him near. While the other father type storms about, suddenly snapping and stomping through the lives of his children, so that they feel that they cannot get away from him. The sons of Ouranos can't quite get going in life, while the sons of Saturn are punished for trying to get things going on their own.   Even when father and son relate well, a single bitter occasion may cut the intimate connection from one to the other. How often is it heard that a man hasn't spoken to his father in many years or that a father can’t find a way to communicate with his son since a certain event occurred or a kind of curse passed between them. All or nothing can be how things go with fathers and sons, as what happens between them can suddenly lead to severe disappointments, to alienation and mutual exile.   As the old stories try to remind us, there are spirits involved; there are deities in our lives and in our closest troubles. There is something that goes further back and deeper down than father or son, parent or child might expect. To become a parent, just as to become someone's child, means to become part of a mystery that reaches back to the beginning of time. We are each born into a mystery that can only be solved by finding the natural nobility of our own souls. In doing that, we become more truly human and thus more able to forgive ourselves and see how others are caught in the mysteries of their own lives.   You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Lead to Gold” that begins on Friday, February 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth considers how we must find our way amidst the collapse of norms and rise of extremes that come at the end of an era.   The collective situation we are now in is overburdened with conflicts and oppositions; but also subject to sudden changes and extremes of all kinds. With each issue that becomes a source of conflict, we see how fragile life is, how the threads that weave things together can easily unravel. Increasingly, we see how the life maps we have been given do not match the terrains of confusion and places of upheaval we keep falling into.   Part of what drives people to extreme beliefs and behaviors is that many of our received ideas and common beliefs turn out to be unequal to the radical events we are witnessing. In the face of radical changes, people not only become disoriented, but can feel a loss of personal identity. This is especially true where people have over-identified with a collective point of view, a national identity or a particular ideology.   Normally suppressed feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and even dread become heightened as people feel more helpless and less able to have a meaningful plan or any sense of control of the course of their life. Yet, the situation we find ourselves in requires each individual to become consciously aware of far more aspects of reality that anyone expected. An expansion of self-identity as well as a deepening of understanding is required in order not to become part of the chaos or slip into a sense of psychic exhaustion, helplessness and despair.   Accepting that we are caught in the midst of a great turnaround that comes at the end of an era helps make sense of the tumultuous events and discordant feelings that surround us on a daily basis. It is also helpful to know that, at a psychological level, whatever tends to limit and restrict us will produce adverse reactions and extreme emotions when we face radical changes. Wherever we feel most constricted, we will feel most threatened by the presence of the archetypal energies of collapse and renewal that accompany the end of an era.   An old idea states that creation is the only outcome of conflict that can satisfy the human soul. In that sense, the stability and coherence we most desire involves a deeper connection to our own soul. And our souls require that we find ways to become part of a re-visioning of life and a re-creation of the world.   Rumi, that old master of understanding advises, "Look at birds, they make great sky circles of their freedom. And how do they learn to do that? They fall, and in falling, they are given wings."  We are like those birds, and we are falling, not of our own choosing, but because of the archetypal dynamic that begins with falling and collapse before it can find its way to a new sense of unity and renewal.   Sometimes we must find our way by falling. If we deny or resist the sense of loosening and falling that comes at the end of an era, we not only risk being caught in social or political extremes, we also risk losing our wings and the spirit of our own lives. And we can lose the possibility of becoming more conscious agents of a re-creation that is also trying to happen in the midst of all the uncertainty and upheaval that accompany times of change.   Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 385 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well-being in this new year and we thank you for your support of our work.  

Myth involves the underlying stories and secret histories of the soul. It helps reveal, not the facts of the matter, but the facts of life. Myth makes meaning of our life experiences. In that sense, myth is both ancient and immediate; it involves both remembering and making anew. When our experience increasingly involves feeling caught in confusions, restrictions and maddening twists and turns, mythic imagination can give us a poetic grasp of our own lives a s well as the world we live in.   Ancient myths of the labyrinth depict both being trapped in a complicated maze and following a thin thread that leads the way out. At this point, the contemporary world can seem a topsy-turvy labyrinth of confusion that we are all caught in. At the same time, Ariadne is always nearby, eternally offering us the thread of our own soul, which is the clue to how we find our way through life's obstacles and confusions.   Part of the worldwide labyrinth we are all caught within involves a pair of universally present, yet deeply contrasting myths. One saga involves epic tales of progress with the human species seen as climbing up from a primitive state to an enlightened condition. This “myth of progress” becomes a story of steady triumph over all obstacles with a goal of reaching a place of freedom from all limitations. When combined with ideas of evolution, many people simply believe that this heroic storyline is the essential human birthright and all that we need to know.   Yet, here on Earth, where things are paired like light and dark or up and down, there is a contradictory myth. The “myth of decline” begins with an ideal, golden age followed by a fall into descending periods of darkness and disorder. Under this narrative, all that people can look forward to is a collapse of the current civilization and its ruling ideas and a loss of order and civility as the energy of the world wears down, and the lights of creation go dim.   Each story can be seen as archetypal, each forming part of the natural inheritance of human imagination. Is there progress of some kind? Or is the whole thing going to hell in a hand basket? The answer is: Yes. For, each narrative depicts something essential about life on earth. We are the inheritors of both narratives and we are being asked to become conscious of both stories at the same time. That is part of the revelation of now, part of the apocalypse of now, and in many ways, part of awakening to the story of now.   If we willfully insist on the myth of progress, we are closing our eyes to all of the pain, loss and dissolution being suffered all over the earth at the level of climate crisis and the COVID crisis, at the level of the social disparities and the crisis of truth and meaning. If we take the myth of decline as a kind of nihilistic philosophy, that allows us to say there's nothing we can do, it's all just going to end any way. Then we are turning a blind eye to the presence of Ariadne's thread, and the continual invitation to find another way to see the dilemma and become part of the reweaving of the next version of the world.   From the place where our own souls try to awaken again and again, we can contribute to making meaning of the world we are in, no matter how chaotic it becomes. For chaos is connected to the imminence of creation. In the realm of myth, chaos is both the state that occurs at the end and also the state that occurs before things begin anew. We are being asked to be part of the creative tension of opposing energies and opposite stories that can lead to revelations about the living world and our role in assisting it to both come to an end and begin again.   Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 385 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well-being in this new year and we thank you for your support of our work.

The word text can mean the definitive “written word,” as in scriptures considered to be the word of God. At this external level, texts are often taken literally, some even written in stone. However, root meanings of text are closer to a sense of “weaving, joining, fitting together.”   Whereas literalized texts tend to divide and polarize people; esoteric texts can carry subtle textures and symbolic threads that can weave things together at deeper levels. The text within the text can offer living textures for reweaving and rejoining all that has been literalized, polarized and torn asunder.   The trap of literal, exoteric texts came to mind when I read an article about a recent search to find Mount Sinai where the Bible tells how God spoke to Moses from within a burning bush. Hundreds of scientists and seekers set off on the solstice for a remote mountain in the desert in southern Israel. They hoped to witness a phenomenon that might prove to be the actual location of the burning bush at which Moses was appointed to lead the Israelites out of exile in Egypt.   The expedition included a 90-year-old archaeologist who had been seeking the historical location of the burning bush for decades. As he stated, "this is the story of the history of humankind." Another way to see it, an esoteric way to view it, is that this is part of an obsession with history, an example of the trap of the literal and the exoteric. When texts have to be taken literally and historically, revelatory events become trapped in the remote past and that tends to remove the divine from the present world. The more profound meanings and deeper connections to the divine and to the mystery of nature become lost.   Part of the wonder of the original event was the sense that the bush was on fire, yet was not consumed by the flames. When seen on a deeper, esoteric level, the burning bush can be any bush, any tree, almost anything that strikes us deeply, opens the eyes of our souls and allows us to see through the surface text to the deeper textures which include the mystical sense that everything in the world is burning in its own way. Any event can become an epiphany for the person who allows their soul to be struck by the presence of the divine in the things of this world at this time.   Nature can be seen as having its own esoteric language that can speak directly to our own inner nature. In that sense, the ecology movement may not change how people see and relate to the world unless it finds deeper, more esoteric levels of meaning and understanding. A genuine reweaving of human culture with great nature may require a more profound sense of the essential connection of the human soul to the living text of nature in which each moment is potentially an epiphany.   Ancient ideas of the cosmos include the sense of continual revelation, the world seen as a living text, as the open book of the divine word of creation ongoing. In losing our connection to the esoteric realm, we lose the vertical imagination that connects us with both heaven and earth. In the modern world, with its exaggeration of the statistical, the technological and the historical, the soul itself is exiled.   Imagination is the key to the esoteric levels of understanding and is also the true spark of the divine in each soul which can suddenly connect us to the heart of nature, as well as to the presence of things divine. The divine spark within us is like the flame inside the burning bush. It is a gift of life, a burning birthright through which we each share in the illumination of stars, in the burning heat of animal life, and in the cool inner fire of trees and the blue smoldering of water that used to be known as the Green Fire and the Blue Fire.   The flame that burns at the center of our heart and soul is our own inner nature seen in its fiery form. Because this inner flame can take many forms, it goes by many names - spirit, imagination, purpose, consciousness, soul, genius.   In order to truly see the world, in order to genuinely help this troubled world, the eyes of the soul need to open and see, not simply the exoteric level of life, but to the profound levels of the esoteric in all of life. When we see the world that way, everything can light up, anything can flare with beauty and spark our inner joy and remind us that we are part of the mystery of creation, the eternal living flame that manifests through the constant changeability and mutability of existence.   Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 380 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well-being in this new year and we thank you for your support of our work.

At the beginning of the third year of the Covid Pandemic the point can’t simply be that once a cure is found, everything goes back to normal. After two years of the pandemic, the uncertainty about it persists and may even continue to grow. And we can be seen to be riding up and down on waves of information in a topsy-turvy world where everything can seem uncertain and everything can change in an instant.   The breaking of the current cycle involves breaking the spell of normalcy itself. For an important realization at this point in the history of the world is that there cannot be a return to normal; that everything has already changed and that uncertainty may have to be accepted as a conscious element of reality.   The pandemic, and all of the uncertainty that surrounds it, can be seen as a demonstration of how the “information age” is not simply conducive to good information. New technologies make it easy to collect information and data and distribute it rapidly. However, assessing information and especially understanding it still depends on old fashioned human judgment. Information can go viral and be available in an instant; but actual knowledge and true understanding take much more time to develop.   Genuine knowledge comes from reflection and patience; but also requires that we accept the presence of uncertainty. An ancient idea states that maturity in the human psyche means an increased capacity to hold opposite ideas at the same time. The ancient Greeks called it being double-minded or even many-minded. The point is that if a person only holds a single idea, it's like seeing the world with one eye. And seeing with only one eye can bring a person closer to becoming blind to what's going on.   We could say that the thread of life is leading us further into the tension between all that we used to believe was so certain and the increasing waves of uncertainty that are penetrating all levels of the world right now. Part of finding our way in the midst of all the trouble involves being able to see the world differently and learning to hold contradictory ideas or competing notions at the same time.   The point becomes not so much about what happens in the end, as much as how to be present in the midst of the dramas, tensions and challenges. The real danger is losing the natural human capacity to hold a creative tension until life changes and renews itself. The point becomes how to hold our attention long enough to recognize the unseen third thing that is trying to emerge from the increasing tensions and polarizations of life on Earth.   The real risk in this world has always been becoming one's true self amidst all the uncertainties of existence. The “little self” or ego self feels that it can’t handle life’s uncertainties. Yet, the soul or deeper sense of our self is never simply defeated by the confusions of life. The knowing soul within us knows why we came here, and what we are intended to live for. Learning to live the life of the soul aligns us with paths of true meaning. While we are on those paths, we not only can survive the tensions of life, but we find ourselves able to contribute to the healing and renewal of life.   Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we send you peace and blessings in this New Year and we thank you for your support of our work.

Michael Meade describes myth as being ancient and immediate at the same time.  Whereas most people imagine myth to be something old and of a past time, Meade explains how myth serves to break the trap of linear time and can return the human soul to a living sense of connection to both the cosmos and the deep self.  “We are in a mythic condition again and myth makes meaning,” states mythologist Meade as he shows how the shedding of forms in the world can bring us closer to the origins of life and the sources of renewal and recreation.   Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we send you peace and blessings for the New Year and we thank you for your support of our work.

On this bonus sharing of the latest premium podcast, Michael Meade begins with a poetic response to the deadening language that at times dominates the discussion about impeaching the President.  What begins as a critique of the speech being used to defend the politics of big lies turns into a lament for the loss of language able to carry the truth of the human heart and soul. A procession of poems and commentary ranges from Aime Cesaire seeking “to rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions" to  D.H. Lawrence warning us how big lies and damning mistakes have repeatedly been sanctified in modern times.  The surprise of this intricate response to the lack of presence and imagination in political life arrives through the ancient wisdom of Kabir, who reminds us that truth resides in the surprising territory of awakening where the deep self and soul waits to be found again. Thank you for listening to this podcast.  You can hear more content like this by joining the growing community of listeners who are members of Living Myth Premium.  Become a member with a $10/month subscription and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, the full podcast archives and a 30% discount on all products.  Become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth. 

This excerpt from the latest premium episode offers samples from the new audio book Awakening the Soul, along with expanded content and spontaneous commentary by Meade. The book sample focuses on the chapter “Inner Eyes of the Soul” which includes a story of an orphan left behind by his tribe, who then unexpectedly has a radical awakening experience that leads to a vision that affects everyone in the tribe. The commentary by the author includes autobiographical material as well as psychological ideas about each person’s “orphan self.” You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Go to www.patreon.com/livingmyth to learn more and subscribe. For $10/month, members of Living Myth Premium receive: * Q&A episodes where Michael Meade answers member questions * Autobiographical and anecdotal stories from Michael * A 30% discount on all products and many events * Archival recordings from live events and dynamic interviews * Access to over 125 Living Myth podcasts Living Myth and Living Myth Premium are products of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a 501©3 organization.  Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project. Peace and blessings, Mosaic Staff

We are pleased to announce that Michael Meade’s latest book “Awakening the Soul” is now available as an audio book.  Here is a sample from this newly released title.  The audio book can be purchased as a download or CD at mosaicvoices.org/audio. Members of the Living Myth Premium Podcast can save 30% on this title and all other offerings from Michael Meade and Mosaic.  Learn more and become a member of this podcast at patreon.com/livingmyth.

On this excerpt from the latest Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade answers questions about the soul posed by listeners.  One question is “what is the meaning of the original agreement of the soul?”  Another is “why is this first agreement so important that it is indelible in the soul?” Using ancient stories about the origin of the soul, Meade offers a compelling commentary on the soul’s way of bridging the two worlds, the eternal and the time bound.  Rather than being separated from the divine by an “original sin”, old stories depict the separation as an original forgetting of the unique pattern in each soul.  The rest of life involves a longing to reconnect to the eternal and live out the soul’s first agreement and original intention in life. This excerpt is from the first of a two-part Living Myth Premium podcast series on the two agreements of the soul. Hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Go to www.patreon.com/livingmyth to learn more and subscribe. For $10/month, members of Living Myth Premium receive: Q & A episodes where Michael Meade answers questions from Premium members Autobiographical stories from Michael Archival recordings from live events and dynamic interviews Exclusive offers on products and events Access to the entire collection of Living Myth podcasts Living Myth and Living Myth Premium are products of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a 501©3 organization.  Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project. Peace and blessings,   Mosaic Staff

On this excerpt from the latest Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade reads selected poems from The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, the renowned anthology edited along with Robert Bly and James Hillman. The recording includes reflections on the surprising dynamic of creating the anthology along with commentary on the importance of poetic inspiration. This is the first part of a Living Myth Premium podcast series that weaves poetry, spoken word and anecdotal stories about the role of art and creativity and the undying speech of the soul.  You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Go to www.patreon.com/livingmyth to learn more and subscribe. For $10/month, members of Living Myth Premium receive: Q & A episodes where Michael Meade answers questions from Premium members Autobiographical stories from Michael Archival recordings from live events and dynamic interviews Exclusive offers on products and events Access to the entire collection of Living Myth podcasts Living Myth and Living Myth Premium are products of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a 501©3 organization.  Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project. Peace and blessings,   Mosaic Staff

Hey Living Myth listeners, thank you for being a part of this podcast.  We wanted to let you know about the Living Myth Premium Podcast, a new offering from Mosaic that gives members access to additional content beyond the free weekly edition of the podcast. Go to mosaicvoices.org or livingmyth.org to learn more and become a member.  Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project. To give you a flavor of the premium content, we have included an excerpt from the first bonus episode.

Michael Meade introduces the role of myth in making sense of our complex and challenging world and he answers the question “Why Myth, Why Now?”.